The whole egg: Wholesome wholemeal toast

I was raised on wholemeal bread and as a child I always found it boring. On the rare occasion a loaf of white bread made it into our house, it was consumed within hours. It's no surprise I've been compensating ever since, often through my love of Italian breads and sourdoughs. I know wholemeal bread is "better" for you. I know some people even consider white flour as "poison". Considering I'm such a health nut you'd be right in questioning why I indulge my childish white bread desires at all. It's pretty simple, if you don't want to think too much about something, you generally don't.

This has all changed, thanks to reading Michael Pollans brilliant book, "In Defense of Food". Just one of the thousand thought provoking ideas contained within this book concerns the lack of health benefits in refined grains. The process of refining wheat, making your brown flour white, removes the bran and the germ, taking fibre, protein, vitamins, minerals and goodness knows what else with it. So according to my "whole egg philosophy" eating white bread and white rice is equivalent to eating two minute noodles! As far as your high fibre or omega 3 enriched white breads are concerned, once again - how can you honestly think refining something, then adding back the handful of things nutritional science considers important (not to mention the 10 other things they add to it to keep it on the shelf longer and taste as much like white bread as possible, because that's what consumers want), will have the same health benefits as eating the unrefined wholemeal bread in the first place.

None of this is really breaking news. My big revelation in all this is that white flour is basically empty calories. I assess all foods based on whether or not I think the calories are worth consuming. For example, there are many high calorie foods I love and eat without guilt, like chocolate, cream, mayonnaise, cheese, chicken thighs etc. On the flip side I think hot chips are okay, but I don't get too excited about them, so generally I only eat a couple (because I know they are pretty high in calories and I'd rather eat something else).

In a very long winded way I'm tryng to explain that the way I view white bread has shifted. I now consider it in the same category as a packet of two minute noodles or a lamington. I like lamingtons and two minute noodles, I eat them, but not every day.

To finish up, during winter I usually eat porridge for breakfast, occasionally switching to toast when I can't face the porridge, here are some recent wholemeal toast breakfasts I've had...