A new study has shown that eating three or four pieces of white bread a day can increase your risk of becoming obese or overweight by 40 percent.
In the study people who eat 60 gram portions of white bread each day significantly increased their risk of becoming obese, according to The Independent.
Professor Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, author of the study, said that this will make a case for those who eat bread multiple times a day to make the switch to whole grain breads instead of white.
The study took a look at 9,000 Spanish university-age students and they found that bread is a huge part of their diets. However, they found that those who ate more bread were more likely to become overweight or obese than those who did not or those who only ate whole grain bread.
“The issue is that white bread is made with highly refined flour which is rapidly absorbed as sugar,” said Martinez-Gonzalez. “Essentially it is equivalent to a high consumption of sugar. The problem is similar to what we see with soft drinks, their sugars are rapidly transformed into fat an organism.”
The Utah Peoples Post reported that a link between whole grain bread and obesity could not be established because of the types of carbs and fiber content that make the bread.
White bread uses refined flour, which is generally stored in the body as sugar and eventually turns into fat.
Researchers recommend that people replace white breads with whole grain to insure healthier lifestyles.
The research conducted has not shown a direct correlation with eating white bread and weight gain, but it does show an association between the two.