When is White Bread Considered 'White'?

Bread: It isn’t just white or wheat anymore. The bread industry has come up with what it’s calling 'transition breads;' and these breads, that are sort of white and sort of wheat, are causing a big stir. If some whole-grain is added to white bread is it still white bread?

That’s the question that has caused the controversy swirling around one of the country’s most popular breads, Sara Lee’s “Soft & Smooth” white bread. About a third of this bread’s flour is whole-grain and the rest is enriched bleached flour.

What exactly is whole-grain anyway? The term refers to all three layers of the kernel; this includes the bran layer, which is the fiber-filled outer layer; the endosperm, which is the inner layer; and the nutrient-dense heart of the grain, the germ layer.

It is bleached flour that gives white bread its soft, airy texture preferred by many over the rather cardboard texture of whole-grain bread. To solve the texture problem Sara Lee introduced “Sara Lee Soft & Smooth Made with Whole Grain White Bread.” The bread contains enough bleached flour to give it the taste and texture of white bread, and enough whole-grain flour to give it a fiber content close to that of whole-grain bread.

The label on a loaf of “Soft & Smooth” white bread lists “enriched flour” as its first ingredient, followed by “water” and then “whole-grain flour.” If the bread were 100 percent whole-grain, “whole-grain flour” would be listed first on the label.

A nutrition advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, has legally challenged Sara Lee to stop using terms like “whole-grain goodness” in its “Soft & Smooth” white bread marketing campaign. “It would be more accurate to say that this Sara Lee product is brimming with the wholesome goodness of white flour and water,” said Steve Gardner, C.S.P.I.’s litigation director.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has some experience and some clout in this area. They instigated action that lead to a legal settlement with Aunt Jemima, getting the company to clearly label the blueberries in their blueberry waffles as “artificial;” and persuaded Cadbury-Schweppes to cease calling its high-fructose-corn-syrup-sweetened Snapple products “natural.”

C.S.P.I.’s executive director, Michael F. Jacobson feels, “Sara Lee is attempting to put a whole-grain halo on bread that is not whole wheat.” He considers Sara Lee’s marketing campaign particularly misleading because some new breads are actually made with white whole wheat flour that is, in fact, whole wheat; but “Soft & White” is not one of them. Wonder Bread has a 100 percent whole-grain white bread product made from an albino-wheat variety that is slightly darker in color than most white breads.

Sara Lee spokeswoman Sara Matheu explained that “Soft & Smooth” is a partial whole-grain bread. “It helps consumers who love that white-bread feel to start incorporating some whole grains into their diet,” she said.

New York Times reporter Tara Parker-Pope discussed the issue in her December 18, 2007 article, “Controversy in the Bread Aisle.” She states that, “The real lesson from the latest white bread debate is that consumers need to pay attention to bread labels, which are notoriously misleading.” For example, some bread packages say “100 percent wheat,” which some consumers mistakenly think is 100 percent whole-wheat, which it is not. Other breads are called “7 grains,” “cracked wheat” or “multi-grain” when they are actually made with brown food coloring and bleached flour rather than healthful whole grains. Many of the multigrain type breads actually contain less than two percent of the grain named on the front of the package.

The key, she says, is to look at the ingredient list. “If a “whole” grain is not the first ingredient and if it contains any bleached, enriched flour, then it’s not 100 percent whole-grain bread.” Another tip she gives is to check the fiber content on bread label because most whole-grain breads have at least three grams of fiber per serving.

C.S.P.I. wants Sara Lee to stop marketing its “Soft & Smooth Made with Whole Grain White Bread” with misleading terms such as “whole grain goodness.” It also wants Sara Lee to donate the profits it has made from the bread since it was introduced in 2005 to charity. Sara Lee has 30 days to respond to C.S.P.I.’s formal notice that it will file suit against the company if the misleading claims continue.