Article: Comparing Low Carb Breads

This comparison was done in Toronto so you may not wish to read on.

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The battle of the bulge has now become the battle of the breads.

The idea was to take three loaves of bread, two low-carb and one
low-calorie and rate them against your average multigrain sample of
the staff of life.

Then compare the nutritional content, price and carbohydrates and
calories. And rank them in a blind taste test.

We selected the just-released Atkins brand Bakery Multigrain Loaf, the
Atkins-endorsed Oroweat Carb Counting Multigrain bread, Weight Watchers
60 per cent Whole Wheat loaf and Dempster's Whole Grains 12 Grain
Bread. ( a popular Ontario brand)

The results were somewhat surprising. For although the three diet
breads were labelled as addressing specific weight-conscious consumers,
the biggest factor influencing their makeup by far was the size of the
slices. Generally a slice of the diet bread was about half as big as
the regular bread.

One slice of Dempster's regular bread weighs in at 45 grams, whereas
the Atkins weighed 28 grams, the Oroweat 27 grams and the Weight
Watchers weighed 21 grams.

And when you consider the price of the breads, the low-carb brands are
very expensive.

Atkins, at $5.99 a loaf, is the priciest. It costs 1.3 cents per gram
or 37 cents a 28 gram slice. Oroweat low-carb bread, at $3.49 a loaf,
costs 0.61 cents a gram or 17 cents a 27 gram slice.

Weight Watchers bread, at $2.39 a loaf, costs .53 cents a gram or 11
cents a 21 gram slice. And Dempster's regular, but by no means
budget-brand bread, was the cheapest at $2.09 a loaf, costing .3 cents
per gram and 14 cents a 45 gram slice.

How do the breads stack up carbohydrate-wise?

Well, first you have to know that the carbohydrate amount touted is the
net carbohydrate amount, meaning the number of carbohydrates minus the
amount of fibre. Atkins comes out on top with the fewest carbohydrates
at 3 grams of carbohydrate per slice or about .11 carbohydrates per
gram.

But this is largely due to the relatively high amount of fibre, 4
grams per slice or .14 grams of fibre per gram weight ‹ three times the
amount of fibre in Dempster's. Chefs we consulted told us the high
fibre content was likely linked to the chicory extract and wheat bran
fibre in the recipe.

Oroweat bread has about twice the carbs of Atkins, 6 grams of net
carbs per slice or .22 grams of carbohydrate per gram weight. And
Weight Watchers had three times the net carbs of the Atkins brand at
only 7 grams per slice and .33 carbohydrate grams per gram weight.

On the surface, it looks like Dempster's, at 20.5 grams of carbohydrate
per slice, is chock full of carbs but when you consider the larger
slices it still has only .4 grams carbohydrate per gram of weight.

As for calories, all of the breads were about the same, around 2.5
calories per gram. Weight Watchers was lowest at 2.14 calories per gram
weight followed by Atkins and Oroweat at 2.5 and Dempster's at 2.7.

The fat content? Atkins ranked the highest, at .07 grams of fat per
gram weight, followed by regular Dempster's and Oroweat at .05 grams of
fat per gram weight. The lowest-fat bread was Weight Watchers, at .02
grams of fat per gram weight.

Five people did the taste test Star food writer Jennifer Bain, health
editor Judy Gerstel, phsyiotherapist Pam Honeyman, writer Nicholas
Keung and this reporter.

Overall, the regular Dempster's got the highest marks, followed by
Weight Watchers, Oroweat and, last, Atkins.

Why is the low-carb bread so expensive? Part of it is due to the way it
is made. No one from the makers, George Weston Ltd., or Atkins would
tell us details of how they make low-carb bread.

However, other experts explained that besides reducing the size of the
slices, there are two ways to lower the carbohydrate count in bread.
Corey Kovacs who teaches in the hospitality and tourism department at
Centennial College says to get low-carb bread, you use flours that are
milled using the part of the wheat grain closest to the fibre husk,
which is higher in protein. Then by also washing the starch out of the
flour the carbohydrate content is reduced, he says.

This adds extra steps to the manufacturing process and requires
separate processing equipment so the low-carb bread doesn't get tainted
with starches and so it is more costly, he says. Another way is to
substitute higher-protein ingredients, which are also more costly says
Ian Gallacher, of George Brown Toronto City College.

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Diva
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There is no substitute for the right food