Dear Mr Rayner
I read your articles with interest and pleasure and am delighted that you have such a profound influence on the eating habits and dining cultures of fellow readers around the world. I was disappointed, however to read your article in Observer Food Monthly on 17 June 2012. Whilst I am sorry to hear that you feel you need to lose a few kilos before going on holiday, I am even more sorry that you have opted to follow a virtually no carb approach and that you declare, in the article, that bread is the enemy.
Mr Rayner, a journalist of your stature and reach, with the kind of influence you have, must understand that millions of readers will take your words at face value and now are set in the belief that bread is in fact the enemy. You know this is not true. Any thinking person knows that this is not true.
Real bread, especially real whole grain bread (as opposed to industrially produced white bread like substance) is one of the world’s true super foods. The complex carbs provide valuable slow release energy, the roughage fills you up and keeps you regular, and the essential fatty acids in the germ are one of the only sources, in nature, of the full complement of B vitamins, critical for a healthy brain.
A tiny, throw away sentence like the one in your article undoes years of excellent work by the Real Bread Campaign to educate people and to interest them in consuming better quality bread. It also undermines the excellent work that responsible millers and bakers are doing across the UK. Every good miller and baker who has read your article is probably feeling an immense sense of betrayal right now because you know, Mr Rayner, that your own lack of will power is the enemy – not bread. You also know better than most, given your deep knowledge of food and the food industry, that the only way to live a healthy life and maintain a healthy weight is to eat in moderation, avoiding highly refined and/or sugary food, and exercise regularly.
Please Mr Rayner will you retract your words? It’s the right thing to do. Good bread is an excellent source of nutrition and, eaten in moderation, is a wonderful part of everyone’s diet. I even have a recipe here for a kind of bread that will help you lose weight if you have the will power not to eat all of it in one go! It’s a whole wheat or spelt bread with avacado oil and olives in it. Whole grains to provide nutrition and energy and avacado oil and olives to provide the necessary fat that you need to actually burn fat. Avoid it (along with all other carbs) at night so that you will burn fat in your sleep and eat it, along with everything else, in moderation and I am certain you will wow the ladies on your upcoming trip to Turkey.
I totally agree – I embarked on a healthy eating campaign a few weeks ago at the same time as I started making my own sourdough, with the excellent assistance of Virtuous Bread. No cakes, biscuits, refined foods or sugars, plenty of fresh fruit and veg, a sensible attitude to fats and plenty of my irresistable sourdough bread have resulted in my losing 5 kilos quite effortlessly. I’m not after a quick fix for a holiday, but a general increase in health and fitness, and it’s working!
Fully agree Jane! And you put down the hard facts as they stand! Stay away from processed foods and moderate on REAL FOODS!!
What a thoughtfully worded riposte. The serious flaw in the whole zero carb movement is demonising certain foods. Food is neither good nor bad but the projection of our own twisted system of morality of it makes it so. Hitler was a vegetarian so where does that leave vegetables?