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Is Something Wrong With The Bread?
Paul Skallas
April 04, 2025
I recently tried an experiment in the month of March. I stopped eating bread completely.
It wasn’t easy. I love bread. I usually eat it every day. Both from the bakery and the grocery store. I made sure not drop my carbohydrate intake. I substituted potatoes and rice or other carbs. I also kept my exercise schedule the same. 5 days cardio with 2 days strength training. I just wanted to see what would happen if I dropped bread for a month. It turns out, a lot happened.
I lost 13 pounds and noticed a small bump in energy throughout the day.
That’s a pretty excessive change for only one month. My first thought is, is it me? Or is it the bread? Most likely, it’s me. Perhaps I undercounted calories when switching from bread to other sources of carbohydrates. Bread is dense, calorically. There’s a reason why it has been a staple of the human diet for a long time.
@johnny.harris The history of bread and how it’s made in under a minute. #learnontiktok #bread #cooking #breadtok #history
Or maybe I may have some undiagnosed sensitivity to gluten that I never really recognized or got checked out. Some variant of celiac disease.
The Iceman
Gluten sensitivity has also been around for a long time. it’s written in the DNA of a man who died millennia before the first gluten-free bakery opened. Otzi the Iceman, Europe’s oldest natural mummy, was discovered in 1991 by hikers in the Otztal Alps.
@dexter.mp4 Ötzi extended version! #prehistory #learning #learneclecticthings #greenscreen
genetic testing revealed he carried HLA markers for celiac disease, but interestingly, his final meal, preserved in his stomach, was a mix of wild meat, bitter greens, and einkorn wheat.
Otzi’s preserved intestine showed no obvious signs of celiac-related damage. Why didn’t Ötzi show signs of gluten-related gut damage?
Ötzi likely avoided gluten-related gut damage because einkorn wheat contains fewer problematic gluten peptides and is less immunogenic. Moreover, genetic predisposition alone rarely triggers celiac disease; environmental factors like frequent gluten exposure or infections typically activate it. Ötzi probably didn't consume gluten often or long enough to develop intestinal damage
It brings up an interesting issue, why is gluten sensitivity rising so much lately?
The Rise of Gluten Sensitivity
When I was growing up, nobody talked much about gluten intolerance or celiac disease. Today, grocery stores dedicate entire aisles to gluten-free products. Clearly, something has changed.
The incidence of celiac disease has risen by an average of 7.5% per year over the past several decades. It has accelerated significantly in the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century throughout the Western world.
I found some statistics on US military members. In the U.S. military, the incidence rate of celiac disease surged from 1.2 to 14.0 per 100,000 person-years between 2000 and 2021. Similarly, prevalence increased from 3.1 to 57.4 per 100,000 service members during this period
Some suggest this increase is due simply to better diagnosis, but a 7.5% annual jump seems unlikely to result solely from improved medical recognition. Were people historically just unaware of feeling unwell? That seems improbable—people in the past weren't ignorant. Bread provided more than half the daily calories for many medieval Europeans; chronic illness from staple foods wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
Moreover, we're probably eating less bread today than ever before.
Modern diets have diversified to include more rice, corn, potatoes, pasta, fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and processed foods.
My suspicion is the bread itself has fundamentally changed in the past few decades, and that shift might explain the rising gluten sensitivity we see today.
What’s Going on with Bread?
Could the rise of gluten sensitivity be linked to how bread has changed since the 1980s?
Why the 1980s? The 1980 marked the beginning of the transition from small regional bakeries to massive centralized operations. In 1980, the U.S. had approximately 9,000 commercial bakeries; by 2020, that number had fallen to about 3,000, despite population growth, resulting in bread traveling much further distances and requiring more preservatives, more ingredients and more industrial farming techniques.
1) Long-Shelf Life
You can buy bread at the store and leave it on your shelf for weeks now and it’ll stay soft.
Look at the ingredients list. Dough conditioners alone have increased by about 300% since the 1980s. Bread back then contained just one or two conditioners, whereas modern commercial loaves frequently include five to seven different conditioning agents.
Clearly, bread isn't what it used to be.
Modern industrial bakeries use high-speed fermentation techniques, drastically reducing rising times from days to mere hours. Traditional slow-fermented bread allowed gluten proteins to break down, making it easier to digest. Today’s rapid rise processes mean gluten remains largely intact, potentially increasing its allergenic potential.
2) Glyphosate
Another important shift since the 1980s is the widespread use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. Farmers often spray wheat and other grains just before harvest, a practice called desiccation, to dry plants quickly for easier harvesting, especially in damp climates. The downside is that trace amounts of glyphosate can remain in bread and other grain products.
Interestingly, increased glyphosate usage has coincided with rising celiac diagnoses, though this could be mere coincidence.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”, sparking public concern and legal challenges.
However, the EPA and other regulatory bodies continue to assert that glyphosate, when used correctly, poses minimal cancer risk.
there's currently no consensus in the scientific community supporting a direct causal link.
3) The Hidden Shift: Industrial Seed Oils in Modern Bread
