Welcome to Season 10, Episode 3, of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Joanie Spencer, editor-in-chief for Commercial Baking, is spending this season with Julie Miller Jones, a member of the Grain Foods Foundation Scientific Advisory Board, and Charlotte Martin, registered dietitian and consultant for the Grain Foods Foundation. They’re debunking bread myths to help bakers develop delicious, healthy grain-based products — and help them educate consumers on the health benefits of bread. Sponsored by Lallemand.

In this episode, we’re debunking assumptions around sodium levels and processing concerns.

Learn more about this season here, and listen to Troubleshooting Innovation on Apple, Spotify and Google.

Joanie Spencer: Hi, Julie and Charlotte. Thanks so much for joining me again this week.

Charlotte Martin: Thank you for having us again.

Spencer: We’ve had a couple of really lively discussions around a few myths, and this week, we are going to tackle two more: sodium and processing.

Bread has baking’s, and maybe just food in general’s, most basic formula: flour, water, salt and yeast. But one of those four ingredients has a pretty bad reputation among health-conscious consumers and some medical professionals. Since you both are well versed in this, I would love to get both of your thoughts on sodium in general. Where are we with sodium?

Julie Miller Jones: Unfortunately, most people in the US eat at what is called the upper level, rather than what is recommended. Some people consume over 3,700 milligrams of sodium a day, the recommendation is 2,300 milligrams. or those people with medical issues, it is down to 1,500 milligrams, which is very difficult to do. You need to use a lot of strategies; my big strategy is to put the saltshaker away mostly and herb it up. Enjoy all the flavors that can come from herbs and spices.

Sodium is a problem, but interestingly, it’s only a problem to about a third of us. Between 20% and 30% of people are what we call “salt-sensitive,” and another 10% to 20% are what we call “reverse salt-sensitive” in that if they don’t get the sodium, they have problems. They’re going for the middle by the recommendations, but there’s been heated debates in the research community about where this should be because I can’t look at you and say, “You’re sodium sensitive, and you’re not.” There is this general push by the WHO, FDA and others to try to lower our sodium intake. The way they’re trying to lower it is not to harm the people that actually can tolerate more salt, addressing those 4,000 milligrams a day is not good.

Martin: I’ve seen lately this big push for everyone to eat more salt, which I think is crazy. As it pertains to bread, this is a common myth that it should be avoided if you’re monitoring your sodium intake. This is because sodium content in bread can vary significantly among different types and brands. Also, not all breads are high in sodium, there are lower sodium options available. Most breads, on average, I believe contain between about 100 to 200 milligrams of sodium per slice, and that’s well within the daily recommended limit of 2,300 milligrams.

It can be part of a balanced diet if you are closely monitoring your sodium intake. And again, I know I keep saying this every episode, but it’s more about considering the overall sodium content of what you’re serving bread with. I looked this up right before this, the slice deli meats you can buy at the grocery store for sandwiches a 2 ounce serving, which no one is sticking to, has 500 to 600 milligrams of sodium in just that small serving.

The average person is probably consuming double that, plus other high sodium condiments. That sodium can add up and most of that is not even coming from the bread. Again, it’s about the whole of your diet, the whole of your meals. But you can certainly include bread in a diet, even if you’re monitoring your sodium intake.

Miller Jones: If you’re at a fast-food chain, you might want to think about choosing an option that isn’t the super stuff, triple-double burger with bacon and all the sauces, because that contains what the government recommends you eat in sodium in a day. Ask for extra tomato or extra lettuce, these are very low-sodium foods. There are ways that you can still participate and go to these fast food chains, but there are ways to make it better for you. I tell them to give me as many tomatoes as they’re willing to give me. But unfortunately, it’s the bread that gets blamed. It’s guilt by association rather than actual guilt by facts.

Spencer: Sure, it makes me think about how people replace the bread with a lettuce wrap and then pack a bunch of sodium-packed deli meat inside the lettuce and think they are going to be fine.

Miller Jones: Some of the sauces are very high in sodium, so that is something you need to look at. Try to get flavor by using spices and herbs, that was one of the things when I taught beginning foods to dieticians, we would try to see how could we make this taste alluring without using a lot of salt?

Spencer: I kind of live by your mantra, Julie. I put the saltshaker away when I’m cooking and use spices. My mother didn’t cook with salt, so I don’t cook with salt. However, if I bake something, I never skip the salt because you can’t change anything in a recipe when you’re baking because it will change the outcome. Manufactured baked goods are the same way, and salt plays an integral role in bread production.

Miller Jones: You can leave it out of any cake or cookie. The kind of recipe where salt is really important is in breadmaking. If it’s a yeast-raised product, it controls the rate at which the yeast grows, and it also controls abnormal fermentations that would give you an off flavor, perhaps even a microorganism you don’t want to ingest. There is a base level of sodium that’s needed in a yeast product which is not needed in the biscuit and cookie kind of product, so those you can leave the sodium or salt out. Then, you can look for baking powders that are calcium-based, not sodium-based, which helps our calcium intake. There are ways even with biscuit and cookie products where you can lower the sodium.

Spencer: How do you successfully formulate to have the lowest possible amount of sodium that you can have without impacting the product quality or the product taste? Is there a way to formulate around it? Can you add other health benefits to offset sodium concerns?

Miller Jones: Many of the products may have more salt than the level that’s necessary. That’s easily available on the web, what amount you would need per 100 grams of flour or 100 pounds of what the baking industry recipe is.

Beyond that, it’s so important in terms of what it does for the fermentation, that what you want to do is work with your diet as a whole so that the things that require sodium to make it healthy and safe get the amount that is required. Then, you control it by controlling the amount of sodium you add to the other foods in your diet.

Spencer: That kind of goes to Charlotte’s point that we’re not talking about massive amounts of sodium. You can consume a reasonable amount of bread in a day and stay well within the recommended daily sodium intake.

Miller Jones: I think the only problematic things Charlotte mentioned are some of the sandwich fillings are very high, pizza toppings and then cheese. Cheese is another thing that to make a successful cheese, you have to have salt. Avoiding extra cheese, in ways like trying to buy your popcorn with no salt, and then flavor it with herbs or something like that. There’s a variety of strategies to address it. I think addressing it when the manufacturer goes as low as they can and still maintains a safe fermentation is the sweet spot.

The myth comes from statements from the USDA that say, the No. 1 source of sodium in your diet is bread and cereals, and that is true because we eat those so frequently. Remember, I told you about 50% of our calories. I like to sort between staple grain-based foods like bread and indulgent grain-baked foods, which we eat a lot of. Those are the ones that I would really encourage people to find options such as unsalted popcorn or things where they can have the snack, but you do it without so much sodium.

Spencer: Let’s go back to this very simple formula: flour, water, salt and yeast. It’s simple, but manufactured breads also get a really bad rap, and it’s often around this term that consumers are picking up on and that’s “ultra-processed.” What are you both hearing from consumers, conversations that you’re having with bread producers, or through GFF, around these assumptions that people are making about processed bread? Is there even such a thing as “ultra-processed?”

Martin: This is another common myth. I’m seeing this word “ultra-processed” all over. This is another common myth that bread is ultra-processed and therefore bad for you. There’s no denying or hiding that bread is a processed food. I don’t even really know if there’s a standard definition of ultra-processed food because it’s not based on current scientific evidence.

So unfortunately, this classification often includes foods that have been intentionally formulated and processed to have a positive impact on health. It’s important that consumers realize that this label of “ultra-processed” doesn’t inherently mean unhealthy. We really can’t say that all of these are unhealthy in the same way that we can’t say that all less processed foods are healthy and nutritious. Some foods undergo processing for very legitimate health-conscious reasons, like ensuring safety, extending shelf life, or even contributing to the food structure and texture.

An example of this is the role of salt in bread. It’s not just about flavor, but also preservation and texture. We just need to continuously remind consumers that bread can provide them with valuable nutrients that are beneficial for overall health. It’s important to understand the nuances of these processed foods like bread.

Miller Jones: The tragedy of the common is that a public health professional named Montero from Brazil, who is on the FAOWHO board and wrote the Brazilian dietary guidelines. He and his colleagues determine the categorization, which has not been adopted by the rest of the world, it places all bread with more than five ingredients, and by his definition, as ultra-processed. Unfortunately, his definition is the one that’s being used for all the research headlines that are saying ultra-processed food causes depression and infertility.

The crazy thing, which Charlotte alluded to, is that it puts whole grain bread in the same category as Coca-Cola. But it’s also in the same category as infant formula and things like Glucerna, which are specially formulated to help a diabetic. His categorization makes me crazy. Nonetheless, it’s what the public health people are using and public health people from prestigious universities in this country are citing all this work and using his categorization for the research. That’s one of the problems that’s promoting this myth.

Martin: I have a question for you. You said that that puts whole grain bread in the same category as soda. Wouldn’t the research then show that whole grain bread is so nutritious, wouldn’t that then show that ultra-processed foods could have beneficial impacts on health?

Miller Jones: I talk about this a lot at conferences, and we have all kinds of data to say that people who eat whole grain bread have a lower risk of everything. I guarantee you that 99% of that bread was not made at home. If it’s home made by the way, it gets a pass, no matter what you put in it, you could put a pound of salt in. So how can those two things be true at the same time?

Some people are actually starting to take apart Montero’s research. They’re taking it apart by showing if we take out yogurt — which also has been shown that no matter how much sugar is in there, it has positive health impacts — if we take out those things that we know have all kinds of data, what is left is Coke and candy. I think it’s really disingenuous to put these disparate things in the same category, but that’s where we’re at.

That’s why we did a headline a week on the evil of this ultra-processed food. And unfortunately, I would say people are not using critical thinking to see what is actually in those categories, and that bothers me.

Martin: It’s also unfortunate for bread manufacturers because if we start looking at ultra-processed foods by this definition of basically something having I think you said more than five ingredients, is just crazy. A manufacturer may want to add some seeds or oats or including multiple flours to increase the nutritional quality, and that would discourage them.

Miller Jones: It is so crazy that if you fortify the food, it immediately makes it an ultra-processed food. It’s nuts. I’m very disappointed at some of the large public health institutions that always say to avoid processed food without really thinking about what they’re saying. Because we can show that people who eat breakfast cereal every day have a lower weight than people who don’t. We have all kinds of data to say that this is not where we need to be. So we have another, as you say, myth to get around. Or if we wanted to add more herbs for instance to avoid sodium, then you’re going to be damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Martin: Something I find interesting is also how the people who are often the first to complain about how processed our food is or how processed bread is are also the first to complain when they get some artisan bread that ends up molding the next day. Processing ensures safety.

Miller Jones: And sustainability. Think about how you can get a loaf of bread from some companies that last for 10 days without molding. Think of what that saves in terms of trucks to drive it and daily baking. As we look to 2050, both in terms of the food supply and in terms of the environment, we have to rethink this. Additives are not “bad-itives.” Additives extend the shelf life, and that is for people living in food deserts and for all of us in terms of living on this planet, that’s really important and it makes it cheaper.

I mean artisan bread is $8 a loaf and I can get one of the loaves with all the additives in it for about $2. I think it’s a classist system and a sexist system, and it’s a sexist system because who’s going to be home making all these things from scratch and are all going to make them correctly? For instance, they don’t know that if you eat a rotten tomato, you get more vitamin C but if you eat a canned tomato you get more lycopene. What we ought to be doing is balancing, just as we do everything else, eat some fresh and some canned or whatever because they all do something.

Spencer: I feel like just adding the word “ultra” in front of it just contributes to this alarmist culture in creating this fear of manufactured foods because what’s the difference between processed and ultra-processed? We hear people say so often avoid processed foods and that’s this rhetoric that gets ingrained into consumers’ minds, and then you throw in ultra-processed and it is like, “Hide your children.” So, what can bakers do? But first I want to ask from a formulating and food science standpoint, it seems like an impossible question, how do they create a healthy product that’s made on a commercial scale with five ingredients?

Miller Jones: If you put it in a plastic bag, in his definition, it is ultra-processed. He saw the food industry come into Brazil when they used to eat more ingredients that they just raised locally and cooked. He thinks the food industry at large came in and that’s the reason that Brazilians are gaining weight. So no, you cannot, you can make French bread with the four ingredients that stales every day, that is processed. But if I have a can of carrots with no salt in it, that is minimally processed under the Montero Scheme. If it has salt in it, or sugar in the can, it’s processed. If I put salt, sugar, herbs and an onion in it, now it’s ultra-processed. That’s how nuts it is.

I think what we want to do is really focus on all of the research that was done showing the benefits of breads, cereals and grains. Has been done with processed food, because that’s the way we eat it. There is no separate category for ultra-processed and unprocessed. With the Australians, we did the equivalent of the N Haynes database, and we went through and if you took out all the ultra-processed grains, people were just like the no grain group, they were going to be low in iodine, folate, iron and the B vitamins.

We knew that, but we went and showed using modeling, you would have to stop eating all bread and eat only oatmeal, quinoa and brown rice as your grain products. That’s such a Herculean dietary shift, it would never happen. We’ve really shown that using ultra-processed in this way is not helpful. We did it with the Aussie database, I hope we do it with the N Haynes database here.

Martin: It seems like there’s little that these manufacturers can do from a breadmaking standpoint. There are a lot of ingredients they shouldn’t want to remove or shouldn’t be removed in general. So, I think it all comes down to really educating consumers and their marketing to try to educate them on why this ingredient is here, why we include salt, and why this bread is fortified. Partnering with health professionals like dietitians for these marketing materials. I really think that’s the best route for them.

Miller Jones: If I were a bread manufacturer this is what I would do. What is sorbic acid? Sorbic acid is from the Rowanberry, which is eaten in several cultures. Benzoic acid comes from cranberries. Cranberries have so much benzoic acid that if the FDA had to allow you to label it, it wouldn’t be able to be sold. So, you can go through each of the things that increase the shelf life of bread and show that they are extracted from natural products. While the chemical name is what is on the label, they needn’t be frightened of the chemical name. If you lived in Poland, you would drink Rowanberry liqueur, you would eat Rowanberry tea and Rowanberry jam. These are things people eat, it’s not foreign.

Spencer: That’s getting into a myth we didn’t attack, the clean label situation and how subjective that is because there are chemical-sounding words that are still clean label and consumers need to be educated on them.

Miller Jones: When I was answering letters in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, someone wrote and asked, “Why are they putting hydrochloric acid in my food?” And I thought, “How did anyone get that idea?” Then I looked at it and they were putting thiamine hydrochloride and adding to breads and cereals.

Not knowing that thiamin hydrochloride was not hydrochloric acid, they had this little bit of knowledge. That’s one of the problems is that we talk in a science sphere and that’s scary to them. They have a bit of knowledge, and they know that hydrochloric acid is dangerous and you don’t want it in your food, and that is hard.

Spencer: Okay, just any last thoughts on when we look at sodium and this idea of ultra-processed. Any final thoughts on what bakers can do to communicate with consumers when it’s something that they can’t formulate around? How can they communicate to their end users that despite sodium, and even though it is made on a production line, this can still be a healthy food?

Martin: I think partnering with health professionals and dietitians, especially those with a presence and who understand research and often share research, can definitely help.

Miller Jones: Just like I said, additives aren’t bad-itives. If we could think of why we processed food, which Charlotte very eloquently talked about, and what would happen if we didn’t process food? We know that in African countries where they don’t process food, half of the food never makes it from the farm to the home. So just some way to explain that yes, this is processed and this is why.

If that could be written in a consumer-friendly way, or just really focusing on all the data that says that bread is good comes from using processed foods, so that doesn’t make sense, does it?

Martin: To add to that, sustainability and reducing food waste are so big right now. Consumers just don’t seem to understand that that means, processing foods. So, trying to educate on that. I don’t know that that burden falls on the shoulders of the bread industry, but integrating some of that messaging into their marketing could be helpful.

Miller Jones: It’s funny that the people who don’t want processed food, they’re the ones that are choosing things like milk made out of oats and almonds, which are very processed. I’m not necessarily against those things, but they have two parts of their brain that aren’t functioning in the same way.

Spencer: That’s what I was thinking about how consumers have this linear way of thinking in lanes. They don’t look at how it all intersects like processed foods are bad if we’re talking about bread, but processed foods aren’t bad if we’re talking about oat milk. There needs to be educational crossover to help consumers understand that because the bread was made at scale, it’s not bad for them.

Miller Jones: If we all made bread at home, how much of your day would it take? And then does it cost less or does it cost more? The reality of actually doing it, and then idealizing minimally processed food and not telling people that, “Okay, if you deep fry the chicken at home, it’s not any better for you than if you eat the deep fried chicken out.” They don’t make those kinds of statements. So it’s troubling.

Spencer: I just encourage you both to keep up the great work of getting the education and the information out there. Thank you for the work that you do with the Grain Foods Foundation to help with this messaging and help bakers and baked goods brands continue to provide good food. I appreciate all the work that you do. That really concludes this week’s conversation.

Next week, I’m very excited because we get to talk about one of my favorite topics and that is sandwiches. We are going to really dive into how bakers can break through the bread myths through sandwich innovation and the Grain Foods Foundation is doing a lot of work here. It is really interesting and sandwiches make me very happy, so I’m excited for next week’s conversation. I will see you both next week.