Today’s Brain Booster is: Break up with bread!
After last week’s episode on Ultra-Processed Food, I received so many Whether questions, that I’ve dedicated today’s entire episode to answering them.
Several questions were related to bread, so I’ll start there.
Spoiler alert: you don’t have to break up with ALL types of bread — just the Ultra-Processed kind, which is all the bread you get from fast food outlets, and most of the bread you buy at the supermarket.
This brings me to the first Whether question from Susie:
According to your definition of Ultra-Processed Food last week, the wholegrain bread I buy at the supermarket — which I thought was an excellent choice — is Ultra-Processed. This just doesn’t sound right. Can you clarify whether bread is Ultra-Processed Food?
Whether bread is Ultra-Processed depends entirely on how the bread was made.
Mass-produced, packaged supermarket bread is ultra-processed food (UPF), whereas traditional artisan or homemade bread is not. The worst breads of all, are the buns you get with a fast food chain burger, Subway sandwich, or at a hot dog stall.
If you were to bake a loaf of bread at home, you would need only three to five ingredients: flour, water, yeast (or sourdough starter), salt, and maybe a touch of butter or olive oil. In contrast, a typical fast food burger bun or supermarket bread contains 25 or more ingredients(!) because industrial breads prioritise shelf life, uniform texture, and most importantly, extreme palatability. They are meant to melt in your mouth so your brain doesn’t register that you’re consuming calories. Consequently, you get hungry again soon after, and it gives them an addictive quality.
Ultra-processed foods trigger brain and behavioural patterns similar to tobacco and drug addiction, though they act through artificial food engineering rather than a single isolated chemical. Unlike nicotine in cigarettes, or cocaine in coca leaves, there isn’t a single addictive molecule in UPFs. Instead, addictiveness comes from industrial engineering that combines refined carbohydrates, added sugars, hydrogenated fats, and salt, at unnaturally high concentrations that enter your bloodstream, and hit your brain’s reward system unnaturally quickly. The speed of delivery is directly tied to a substance’s addictive potential.
The faster something changes your brain chemistry, the more powerfully the brain’s reward centre — the meso-limbic dopamine system — links the physical act of consuming, with the immediate chemical reward. This instant reinforcement rewires neural pathways and creates incredibly strong habit loops and cravings.
A lot of people simply can’t get their head around supermarket bread being genuinely addictive, so in this episode, I drill down on exactly why that is.
I’ll also answer the following Whether questions:
- I’d like to know whether supermarket sourdough bread is healthy?
- Can you tell me whether artisan non-sourdough bread is healthy?
- I’d like to know whether natural flavours in a list of ingredients are genuinely natural?
- Can you tell me whether nori seaweed sheets are Ultra-Processed?
To conclude this episode, I discuss the most common Ultra-Processed Foods that escape recognition and slip under people’s radar because they’re often considered household staples.
Happy discoveries!
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Click here to watch the episode on my YouTube channel, or listen to Healing with Dr Helena on your preferred podcast platform. I’ll publish a new episode every Monday, and you’ll receive an email notification that morning. Please subscribe to my podcast or YouTube channel so that you don’t miss an episode, and send your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
If you’re happy for me to play your voice on my podcast, you can provide an audio file. Otherwise, you can type your question for me to read out.
I very much look forward to answering your questions, and exploring how we can all build a smarter brain, stronger body and deeply fulfilling life.
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