WHY IS WHEAT FLOUR WHITE?

Do you know how flour is being made?
We all think it's a simple process of transforming of wheat to flour - grinding.

But it's NO so.

If you take wheat and grind it, you will NEVER get this mega snowwhite flour we're used to see in bakery.

Flour has a long and complicated way before it comes to our kitchens.

So HOW is wheat flour (the highest grade) made?

Just grinding of wheat is not enough for manufacurers.
Why?

Such whole-grained flour is poorly stored, quickly deteriorates, it often infests by insects, which find necessary nutrients for themselves in it because it's still ALIVE.

But it is not profitable, so manufacturers clean it. And as it turned out, it is cleared of substances useful to humans!
A huge amount of vitamins, trace elements, and so necessary for us fiber, they all are thrown away!

But that is not all.

To make the flour quite white, and in the opinion of the manufacturers, presentable and attractive, it is bleached with chemicals..

1. Potassium Bromate

Bread with “brominated flour” is fluffy and unnaturally white.
Potassium bromate is banned for the food industry in Russia, EU countries, China, Brazil, Canada.
Permitted in the USA.

1. Chlorine dioxide

fter the flour has been treated with chlorine dioxide, tocopherols (vitamin E), essential fatty acids, are completely removed. Studies in mice have shown that when feeding on bread made from chlorine dioxide-treated flour, the animals felt E-vitamin deficiency.

1. Benzoyl peroxide

In its pure form is a strong carcinogen.
In many countries it's still permitted for usage - for instance, in Ukraine - for use in the baking industry.

1. Ammonium persulfate

It has a third hazard class. It can cause severe asthma attacks that are dangerous to the skin and eyes.
It is banned in food production in all countries of the world. But sometimes it is illegally used as baking powder for dough, for bleaching flour, in the production of soft drinks.

That's why

it is better to use whole -flour!

Here we can see (from the right hand): whole-grained flour, it's natural and useful!
Then we see sifted dozens of times flour.
The next three - "shop" flour.
The last yellow one is “enriched” flour, which is sold in stores under the label of a healthy product.

How it is colored and enriched is not known for sure...