Thaindian News

London, Feb 15 (IANS) Wholegrain bread is good for you, as most people know. But it is not only the fibre-rich bran, the outer shell of the grain, that is healthy.
Research at the Lund University Faculty of Engineering (LUFE) shows that bread baked with white rye flour, flour made from the inner, white part of the rye kernel, leads to better insulin and blood sugar levels compared with wheat bread with rye bran.

White rye flour thus leads to much better values than both regular wheat flour and rye bran. At the same time, much of the bread that is sold in stores today in most countries is in fact baked with wheat flour and bran from various grains.

The great difference between white rye and white wheat surprises the researchers.

“Precisely what it is that makes rye lead to a stable blood sugar curve is as yet unknown. But we are getting closer and closer to an answer,” says Liza Rosen, doctoral candidate in applied nutrition at the LUFE, who has led the study

“There are several different types of rye, and all not all types have the same effect, which means that some of them can be omitted from future studies. The rye flour that is sold in stores is often a mixture of different types,” adds Rosen.

The research is part of the EU project “Healthgrain”, in which researchers study how wholemeal products can be used to prevent diseases including type-2 diabetes and heart and vascular diseases.

If you want to optimise health benefits, you should eat porridge or bread made from whole grain, where all the parts of the grain are included, emphasises Rosen.

“This gives you all the benefits of rye. The bran includes many healthful fibres, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. This also helps give a feeling of satiety and helps lower blood sugar responses over the long term.”

“On the other hand, we did not see such good results regarding blood sugar and insulin directly after the meal,” she says.

In meal tests, researchers also found that those who ate boiled rye kernels for breakfast were fuller and ate much less for lunch, compared with those who ate bread made from white flour, says a LUFE release.

They also found that both bread and hot cereal made with white rye and wholegrain rye are more filling than white wheat bread. The most effective form was rye porridges.