Crohn’s Disease Diet Tips – Recommended Bread Products
Many physicians recommend that patients who suffer from Crohn’s disease avoid foods with gluten as an ingredient because it tends to irritate their condition.
Eating a high carbohydrate diet gives the dangerous bacteria living in your intestinal tract a chance to proliferate.
Gluten and grains can often cause Candida overgrowth, so avoiding these in your diet is often an excellent way to balance the flora in your intestines, while reducing the inflammation commonly found with Crohns disease as well.
Gluten, along with other proteins in grain, is very difficult to digest. A diet high in unfermented whole grains, particularly wheat, puts an enormous strain on the whole digestive system. Eventually, the GI system breaks down and you end up with allergies, celiac disease, mental illness, chronic indigestion and Candida albicans overgrowth to name just a few.
Avoid whole wheat bread as well
Many people with crohn’s disease seem to have some level of gluten sensitivity. For those people, whole wheat bread–whether organic or not–would not be good for them.
On the other hand…..
Cereal grains and legumes play an important role in supplying the nutrients, as well as over 70% of the daily energy requirements, of over two-thirds of the world’s population (Edwards et al. 1971). A Nationwide (USA) Food Consumption Survey in 1977-78 found that cereal product consumption was equivalent to 226 grams of flour per day for men and 156 grams for women (Guthrie, 1989). Bread, the most common form of cereal intake in many countries has been designated the Staff of life, and rightly so, since it contains more nutrients per weight than meat, milk, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables.
Yes, some carbohydrate are important
For cutting carbohydrate out completely, can be just as dangerous on your body than cutting out any essential nutrient. Carbohydrates give you certain nutrients as well and cutting them out completely can, as someone mentioned earlier, potentially damage parts of the body. True, some folks eat far too many of them, but cutting them out altogether can be just as bad as eating too much. There’s much to be said for the term, everything in moderation.
So which bread products are safe to eat if you have Crohn’s disease?
Two bread products that ARE recommended for those with Crohn’s disease are sourdough and sprouted bread products.
Soaking grains/nuts/legumes in an acidic medium for 12 to 24 hours will effectively neutralize phytates as does sprouting which is more involved and actually entails sprouting or germinating the grain or legume. Fermenting, as in preparing a true sourdough, will also neutralize ant nutrients.
1. Sourdough bread
Some Crohn’s disease patients people who are gluten intolerant have reported that they are free of symptoms when the sourdough bread is prepared with a long proving period.
Sourdough is an alternative to the standard baker’s yeast that most bread is made from now. It is made from a wild yeast, rather than a cultured yeast and was traditionally used to make bread. This wild yeast contains lactobacillus, which is one of the active ingredients in yogurt.
Free of commercial yeast, sourdough breads have an aroma and a distinctive flavor all their own and are naturally leavened by a fermented starter.
Soaking grains/nuts/legumes in an acidic medium for 12 to 24 hours will effectively neutralize phytates as does sprouting which is more involved and actually entails sprouting or germinating the grain or legume. Fermenting, as in preparing a true sourdough, will also neutralize ant nutrients.
Overall the bread takes much longer to make than normal yeasted bread. As a result of this it is more digestible.
In addition to being naturally leavened, home-baked sourdough breads offer other nutritional benefits because it contains only the highest quality ingredients such as organic whole-grain flours, purified water, and unrefined mineral-rich Celtic Sea Salt. With great-tasting flours, the addition of oil and sweetener is unnecessary because the grain itself tastes rich from the oil in the germ, and sweet from the natural complex sugars in the grain, especially when it is freshly ground.
With sourdough bread, complex carbohydrates are broken down into more digestible simple sugars and protein is broken down into amino acids. Enzymes develop during proofing which are not lost in baking since the center of the loaf remains at a lower temperature than the crust.
It’s the fermentation, partly from lactobacillus, that makes eating good quality bread an aid to digestion of all complex carbohydrate foods including other grains, beans, and vegetables. It helps restore the functioning of the digestive tract, resulting in proper assimilation and elimination.
Natural leaven bread, because of its inherent beneficial ferments, slowly recreates the population of friendly lactobacillus digestive bacteria in the absorption tract. The end result is a recovery of digestion and proper elimination by the effective action of friendly bacteria.
These beneficial bacteria help control Candida albicans, whereas baker’s yeast is a pro-Candida organism. This is a brown bread that truly is "the staff of life" as it enhances the whole immune system.
During the process of soaking and fermenting, gluten and other difficult-to-digest proteins are partially broken down into simpler components that are more readily available for absorption. If the fermentation process continues for long enough and the requisite bacteria are present then most if not all of the gluten may be broken down. This would explain why some gluten-intolerant people can digest sourdough bread without any symptoms of gluten allergy.
Two widely available sourdough bread products are:
2. Sprouted bread
If you find that you tolerate whole grains but are sensitive to gluten, try sprouted bread.
Instead of grinding dried grains into flour, sprouted grain breads are made from the germinated sprouts of grains like wheat, barley and millet; many believe these sprouts provide more vitamins and nutrients.
As a seed germinates, the amino acids are broken down into simpler formats that are more easily digested by many people
The sprouting deactivates the lectins in the gluten grains and renders the breads much more digestible – Also there’s a different variety of sprouted breads, cooked at very low temperatures, which result in a very moist, dense "bread" (not so easy to slice, but very delicious crumbled into a salad or soup.
Sprouted grain breads have different properties from no sprouted grains. Most notably they have no need for any fortification of vitamins or minerals as they are rich in these nutrients. Sprouted grains also offer a complete protein, something rare among grain products. They are mostly free of gluten and can often be tolerated by gluten sensitive people. Sprouted grains are also more alkaline than the acid forming no sprouted grains.
A highly recommended sprouted bread product is Ezekiel Bread, produced by Food For Life Inc. Food For Life breads, made from sprouted grains, are richer in protein and vitamins than bread baked from dry grains ground into flour.
Food For Life’s exclusive sprouting process not only significantly increases valuable nutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, B-vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium but also causes a natural change that makes the protein and carbohydrates easier for the body to use. In fact, sprouts are lower in carbohydrates and calories than the grains from which they were sprouted.
And even better still, their exclusive baking process preserves these valuable nutrients and retains the important natural fiber and bran.
