Comment by commoner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by commoner | Hacker News Reader

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Subway's "wheat" bread also used to be white bread with caramel coloring. They changed it to be whole grain under the US FDA definition (minimum 51% whole grains) in 2014.

https://www.subway.com/en-us/menunutrition/nutrition/alwaysi...

Edit: Found the ingredient lists. Ingredients are in order of quantity from greatest to least.

"9-Grain Wheat" bread recipe in 2012:

> Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, high fructose corn syrup, whole wheat flour, contains 2% or less of the following: wheat gluten, oat fiber, yeast, soybean oil, wheat bran, calcium blend (calcium carbonate, vitamin D3), salt, rolled wheat, dough conditioners (datem, sodium stearoyl lactylate), yeast nutrients (calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate), degermed yellow corn meal, rolled oats, rye flakes, caramel color, triticale flakes, parboiled brown rice, refinery syrup, honey, barley flakes, flaxseed, millet sorghum flour, flavor (yeast extract, salt, natural flavor)

https://web.archive.org/web/20120121203702/http://www.subway...

Note that the recipe contained more high fructose corn syrup than whole wheat flour.

Current "9-Grain Wheat" bread recipe:

> Whole wheat flour, enriched flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yeast, sugar, grain and seed blend (wheat, rye, yellow corn, oats, triticale, brown rice, barley, falx seed, millet, sorghum), wheat gluten, contains 2% or less of: salt, soybean oil, malted barley flour, cultured wheat flour, sunflower lecithin, dough conditioners (ascorbic acid, enzymes)

https://www.subway.com/-/media/USA/Documents/Nutrition/usPro...

There's also the chicken/soy kerfuffle [0], where _Canadian_ versions of the product showed their chicken to only be about half chicken.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_(restaurant)#Soy_protei...

I've noticed that VitaminWater has a warning on it that you shouldn't drink more than two bottles of it per day in Canada. What's up with that?

/Stopped eating Subway because the bread clogs me up.

https://www.thestar.com/business/2011/01/19/vitaminwater_del...

>In reality, a 591 ml bottle of Vitaminwater contains about 33 grams of sugar, while a 355 ml can of Coke contains 39 grams.

It's got a lot of sugar unless you drink the artificial sweetener version.

It's actually SugarWater unless you get a diet variety.

> Subway's "wheat" bread also used to be white bread with caramel coloring.

That's hilarious. And also a total indictment of US mass market food culture.

I did a gig for a statewide public school cafeteria purchasing portal and all of the wheat bread they bought was 51%. I think there was some mandate around supplying “wheat” and this met the threshold.

Yes, you're right. The FDA allows the following health claim to be used for marketing "whole grain foods" that "contain 51 percent or more whole grain ingredient(s) by weight per reference amount customarily consumed (RACC)":

> Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods and low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol, may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/health-clai...

Products that are 100% whole grain almost always explicitly say "100% whole grain" (or wheat) on the packaging.

All foods served in school breakfasts and lunches in the US must be "whole-grain rich" as of the 2014-15 school year, with the presence of the FDA health claim being one of the approved ways to confirm that a food is "whole-grain rich":

https://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/whole-grain-resource

Subway has always been marketed as a healthy fast food option, but its "9-Grain Wheat" bread was carefully named and advertised without being described as "whole grain" or "whole wheat". Many consumers assumed that "9-Grain Wheat" was whole wheat bread, when the ingredients told a different story before 2014.

> "9-Grain Wheat"

Yeah, n-grain and multigrain have nothing to do with whole grains, but people think they do.

There's so many weasel terms in bread. Even Wonderbread is Wheat bread, and multigrain could just mean wheat plus corn...

"Multigrain" is the most confusing term. A bread can have more than one type of grain and still not be whole-grain. Most multigrain breads in the US that are also whole-grain will specifically say so.

The Whole Grains Council (which created the Whole Grain Stamp icon used on the labels of US food products) has a guide for determining which words refer to whole-grain foods, and which do not:

https://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/identifying-...

Ah, good old penny pinching corporate behavior! Reminds me of Taco Bell and their “beef”. How much meat needs to be in a product to be meat? More than 35%! https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_813185

According to Taco Bell, it's 88%, not 35% -- and the plaintiffs in that suit settled without disputing the 88% figure, changing their story to say, more or less, "all we wanted was for Taco Bell to actually give us the real number."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/04/22/1355399...

12% seasoning is still a lot by weight, to be sure -- it's something like four tablespoons per pound of ground beef -- but a lot of these "fast food companies aren't using real food!" stories get overly sensationalized, and this one never came across like it had a whole lot of there there.

At least beef is the only meat in it. If a restaurant wants to reduce the amount of beef in something to save money, as a lacto ovo bovo porco vegetarian I'd much rather see them compensate with more seasoning than by adding some cheaper meat like turkey or chicken like many places do.

Wait till you find out that soy milk doesn't actually contain any milk and is just soy juice.

It still boggles my mind that wheat is considered a health food. Even so called ‘whole wheat’ is mostly sugar in the form of starch polysaccharides combined with a bit of protein and unremarkable amounts of fibre.

I'm not saying that sucrose isn't worse than starch. Obviously pure sugar is worse. Fructose is significantly worse. But it's wrong to think of bread as some kind of health food when in reality it's predominantly composed of well-disguised glucose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour#Composition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch

Starch is the chief form of dietary carbohydrate intake. Unless it's refined, if it's a carb it's probably starch.

I wouldn't call wheat a health food quite like vegetables, but it's tough to get 2,000 calories eating only broccoli.

> it's tough to get 2,000 calories eating only broccoli.

See, that's what makes it so healthy

I agree with all of that.

Though I won't have a bad word said about broccoli. Lightly stir-fry your broccoli in coconut oil, pinch of salt and half a lemon and it's easy to get to 2,000 calories—and makes a satisfying meal alongside a modest portion of protein.

I have nothing against broccoli, but 2000 calories-worth is 13lbs (setting aside the coconut oil).

If you need calories, you can always wash your broccoli down with a block of chocolate.

Seriously though, there's plenty of calories in the coconut oil, half a lemon and a modest serving of protein. And it's not like you're going to have broccoli for every meal. Between the eggs and avocado you might have for breakfast and whatever convenience food you'll probably have for lunch, you're unlikely to need more calories for dinner anyway.

Most people aren't vegan, and anyway legumes have more protein density.

Hate to break it to you, but the carbs in legumes is also starch. And eating nothing but protein will give you kidney stones.

I buy whole wheat bread with very little sugar, although it is easier to find wheat bread with lots of added sugar and even more so in restaurants. I guess I would consider it as a good part of my balanced nutrition, not so much healthy by itself.

Your "low sugar" bread is only low sugar until you eat it. Whole wheat is mostly polymers of glucose sugar and it's turned into sugar when your body digests it.

Bread is a good source of calories but offers little in the way of nutrition. In fact, in terms of its phytic acid content, wheat germ is functionally an anti-nutrient because it impairs bodily absorption of iron, zinc and calcium.

And while bread can be included in a healthy diet, few people in the western world are suffering from a lack of dietary calories. For anyone who is currently consuming more calories than they need, bread has no nutritional upside.

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