Many loaves of bread offered to consumers at eateries, shopping malls and roadsides may be poisonous. With the cost of sugar and other ingredients used for producing bread hitting the roof lately, many bakers have resorted to using artificial materials in order to cut costs, attract and retain customers. Experts say some of the artificial ingredients are unhealthy and could cause life threatening diseases in the long run, INNOCENT DURU reports.....CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE
Vivian, an 18-year-old, loves eating bread. Hardly does a day end without her at least snacking on bread. But her fancy for bread is hinged strictly on one condition: it must be very sweet.
I love sweet bread. It is always as if I am eating chewing gum each time I eat sweet bread. There is a particular product that actually tastes like chewing gum and I always go for it. In fact, I can finish a big loaf of sweet bread at a go,” she said. The danger in Vivian’s preference for sweet bread, however, is that she cares less about the materials deployed by bakers to make her bread sweet
Her words: “Whatever is used to sweeten bread is none of my business. My only concern is that the bread is sweet.
“At a particular time, my mum stopped buying a brand that actually tastes like chewing gum, but that is the one I like. Bread is meant to be sweet and enjoyable. Once it is not sweet, it cannot be enjoyed as far as I am concerned.”
Vivian is not alone in her craze for sugary bread. All the teenagers interviewed by our correspondent also expressed excitement about eating sweetened bread. This obsession for sugary bread may have been why bakeries are springing up everywhere and trying to outdo one another in the bid to produce the ‘sweetest’ bread.
Findings, however, revealed that some of the loaves in circulation are not baked with the usual table sugar. Many bakers are said to have resorted to using all manner of artificial sweeteners without minding their health implications because of the skyrocketing price of sugar.
But beyond the rising price of sugar, Dr. Kavita Rao, writing on drkavitarao.com, points to the fact that the use of artificial sweeteners by some bakeries could be deliberate.
She said: “Artificial sweeteners retrain the taste buds to require more and more sweetness. As a result, people end up eating and drinking too much, becoming addicted to sweet treats, and gaining weight.
“The truth is artificial sweeteners have dangers lurking beneath the surface, including links to weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and a number of other health risks.”
Disturbing as Dr Kavita’s warning is, it sounds like a fairy tale to Eji, who boasts that she often switches from one brand to another because of the level of sweetness.
“Once I see a sweeter loaf, I will leave the one I was eating and start patronising the new one. In fact, I stopped eating a particular brand of bread because it was not sweet enough. I later got a sweeter brand which I also subsequently abandoned for a sweeter one,” she said.
Like Vivian, Eji also does not care a hoot about how bread comes out sweet.
“No, no, no,” she shook her head vigorously in disagreement. “It does not really matter to me. I will feel very bad if I am asked to stop eating bread.
“There was a time my mum even asked me to stop eating bread because I was getting very fat, but I just cannot do without eating bread, particularly sweet ones. It is not possible.”
In the mind of Dammy, the desire for sugary bread also burns like fire.
She said: “I eat sweet bread, and as far as I am concerned, the only bread that is not sweet in the market is Agege bread (local bread). They are tasteless in the mouth. But other brands that are not Agege are usually sweet.”
Shutting the door to further questions, she said in a tone of finality: “I like sweet bread because it is sweet and nothing more.”
For Eucharia, life is sweet and any loaf of bread she would eat must be sweet. She said: “Sweet bread tastes nice. I really don’t think there are any side effects to eating bread. I may be wrong though.”
Prodded about the conditions under which she would consider unsweetened bread, she said: “if I have to eat a loaf of bread that is not sweet, I will have to do that with a large quantity of butter to push it through my throat.”
The story is not different for Nnena, who spoke glowingly about her love for sweet bread.
She said: “I like sweet bread because it is sweet and sugary. I can’t eat any bread that is not sweet. Never! It will taste bitter in my mouth and give me the feeling that I am suffering.”
Bakers speak on using artificial sweeteners
The rising price of sugar is said to be largely responsible for many bakers using artificial sweeteners in their bread.
A baker who gave his name simply as Muri said: “The cost of production has so skyrocketed that we hardly make profit these days. Sugar is an example. The price has gone astronomically high.
“I used to buy a bag before but I later came down to buying half a bag. Now, I can’t buy half a bag anymore. I only buy a paint rubber of sugar. The price of a paint rubber now is almost the price of a bag before.”
To cut costs and remain in business, Muri said, “it is artificial sweetener that I use for production now. It was introduced to me by someone selling baking materials.
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“For our production, we only use the long part of a spoon to scoop the sweetener. That small quantity is equivalent to one and a half paint rubber of sugar. Assuming you were supposed to use three paint rubbers of sugar, you can reduce it to one and a half and use a small quantity of the sweetener.
“That small part of a spoon will make up for the one and a half paint rubber of sugar that you are removing. If you use it in a large quantity, the product will come out bitter. That is why we use the long side of a spoon to scoop it.”
Describing the nature of the sweetener, Muri said: “It is not a branded product. The sellers said they used to buy it in measured quantities. They always package it in the way N100 sugar is packaged. But that quantity of sweetener is sold for N500.
“When we buy it, we put a small quantity in water to dissolve, then we mix it with sugar. With that, you are going to achieve a good result.”
Asked about the use of saccharin, Muri said: “I don’t use saccharin. Some people may be using it but I don’t. What I use to complement sugar in my production is what I have told you.
“I also don’t use bromate. Most standard bakeries won’t use bromate. It is local bakeries that can be doing that for reasons best known to them.
“If we use only sugar, we will run at a loss. In fact, many bakers will go out of production and that will make bread scarce.
Asked if he is aware that sweeteners have side effects, he said: “Sincerely speaking, I don’t know if it has any health hazards. I don’t know. But nobody has complained of any health problems eating our products.”
Another baker, who gave his name simply as Adisa, said he does not use sweeteners. But he admitted that many bakers use them to cut costs.
He said: “Most bread labels have ‘bromate and saccharin free’ written on them, but most bakeries use sweeteners. I don’t use it because what I cannot eat, I won’t serve to another person.
“Using sweeteners will make you lose your customers in the long run. When people eat a loaf of bread with regular sugar, they will end up dumping the one with sweeteners.”
Speaking in the same vein as Muri, Adisa noted that bromate is commonly used by local bakeries. Bromate makes bread’s size rise. Each bakery’s oven and mixer have their capacities.
“If your mixer and oven can take 20kg at a time and if that is supposed to ordinarily give you 40 loaves, you may end up getting 50 loaves with bromate.
“Bromate is very deadly. It is not what bakers should be adding to their production. It is meant for animals.
“When I worked as a livestock farmer, we used to mix bromate with what we compound to feed the pigs so that they can be very big.”
Adisa noted that those engaging in the use of sweeteners are people who gate crashed into the business.
He said: “Some people gate crashed into the business of bread making while some had industrial experience before setting up their bakeries.
“For people like me with industrial experience, adjusting to changes in cost of production is very easy.
“Now sugar is very expensive and that will make your profit go down. The only substitute for sugar is sweetener, which I don’t use. I don’t use sweetener at all because it is not healthy.
“Again, sweeteners give what I call after taste. If you eat a loaf of bread made with sweetener and drink water, your mouth will taste like something that has been sweetened. For me it is a bad taste and it could make a mess of your production.”
Continuing, he said: “You can’t as a baker increase the price of your product because of the rising cost of sugar. To continue to be in business, you have to sacrifice part of your profit to cover up.
“You can’t be increasing price as the cost of production is rising on a daily basis.”
Another baker, Grace Peter Okonkwo, said: “It was my landlord who made me to know that some people are using artificial sweeteners when he sent a video about it to me recently.
“Because of the situation, they will add some quantity of sugar and mix artificial sweetener with it.
“The first I knew about saccharin was when I went to buy ingredients for the natural drinks that I produce.
“The seller offered me something tied in a nylon bag and told me that instead of sugar, I should buy saccharin. , that it is sweeter than sugar and that is what everybody is using now. I was shocked.
“I don’t even know whether that saccharin was N100 or N200, and they say it will go round a bag of flour. I bought a bag of sugar for N82,000. because it is better to use the right thing and increase the price than give people what will be killing them gradually.”
She added that the use of artificial sweeteners is not restricted to bread. “They use it even in cake. At a seminar I attended recently they told us all manner of things that people do to double their cake.
“That is why when I tell people my price they will scream ‘wetin happen. Your price too high’. Whatever I produce, my family eats from it.
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“I use sugar in spite of the price. The last one I bought was N82,000 a bag. The price moved from N60,000 recently to N65,000, N70, 000 and now N82, 000.
“Before now, a bag of flour used to be N10,000 while sugar was N12,000.”
What are artificial sweeteners?
The National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, USA defined artificial sweeteners as chemically synthesized substances that are used instead of sucrose (table sugar) to sweeten foods and beverages.
It said: “Because artificial sweeteners are many times sweeter than table sugar, much smaller amounts (200 to 20,000 times less) are needed to create the same level of sweetness. The caloric content of sweeteners used in such tiny amounts is negligible, which is why they are sometimes described as non-nutritive.”
Artificial sweeteners used in baking Saccharine, Acesulfame potassium, Aspartame and Sucralose are some of the artificial sweeteners used in baking.
A report on allrecipes.com reveals that “Sucralose is made from sugar, but is not metabolised by the body like sugar. It is 600 times sweeter than granulated sugar. Granular sucralose is the form used when baking. “
Dr Axe, a co-founder at Ancient Nutrition, described sucralose as a chlorinated sucrose derivative. “This means it’s derived from sugar and contains chlorine. Making sucralose is a multi-step process that involves replacing the three hydrogen-oxygen groups of sugar with chlorine atoms. The replacement with chlorine atoms intensifies the sweetness of sucralose.”
Originally, Dr Axe said, sucralose was found through the development of a new insecticide compound. “It (sucralose) was never meant to be consumed. However, it was later introduced as a natural sugar substitute to the masses, and people had no idea that the stuff was actually toxic.
Saccharine, according to allrecipes.com, is 200 to 700 times sweeter than sugar and Aspartame, 160 to 220 times sweeter than granulated sugar. “This sweetener (Aspartame) is heat-sensitive: it loses its sweetening power when heated, and cannot be used for cookies or cakes. The manufacturer does recommend trying it in no-bake pies and in puddings after they have been removed from the heat.”
It added: “Acesulfame potassium is 200 times sweeter than sugar. It is heat-stable, so it can be used in baking and cooking. Use acesulfame K in combination with granulated sugar when baking.”
Why sweeteners are unhealthy – Health experts
In spite of the unbridled use of sweeteners by bakers and others, health experts have expressed grave concerns about the implications.
A holistic nutritionist and dietician, Obembe Oluwaseun, told our correspondent on the phone that sweeteners can be detrimental to health.
He said: “Sugar is a delightful thing that gives taste in food. We have refined sugar and unrefined one. The refined one is the one substituting sucrose in the system. Then the unrefined one is the natural one.
“The unrefined one contains a lot of components while the refined one has some components that have been removed and other ones added. This can constitute nuisance to the system and destabilise the body mechanisms.
“I prefer the unrefined one because the unrefined one, when it gets into the body, the body has to work on it and break it down to sucrose so that the liver can instruct the pancreas to release insulin.
“But the refined one is already refined. The body does not need to refine it again.
What we are telling the body by its consumption is that once it gets into the body, they should release insulin instantly.
That is why we have a high case of diabetes now because immediately you take it, the body sees it as already been refined and would just release insulin. This can damage the liver.
“If the liver is affected, what else is left? Liver is the main refineries. Once it is affected, the whole system is down.”
To validate his remark, Obembe said: “Let the government carry out a test on all Nigerians and you will be seeing different kinds of complications in people’s bodies.
“People addicted to sugary food are sick. The sugar they take is unhealthy and very detrimental to health.”
Speaking on the challenges of cardiovascular cases in the country and the place of artificial sweeteners, DR Olusegun said: “Well, that cardiovascular problems have increased is not in doubt at all. There are figures to show that risk factors have increased. Attention has increased with regards to where we were before. So, at the same time, now, the prevalence is ranging about 35%. In some places, up to 42%, 48%.
“It used to be 30% before but now we are hitting almost 40% in some places, and even more than that in some other places. Diabetes has also increased, heart failure has increased, and stroke has also increased. The leading causes of death and admission in tertiary centers are cardiovascular diseases; stroke, heart attack, and the likes. And these are not the way it used to be before.
“Weather sweeteners are major contributors, research hasn’t really isolated it as a contributor solely on its own. Research has not looked in that direction, but we know that, collectively, they are one of the factors that are kind of increasing cardiovascular risk factors and the likes.”
Experts list alternatives to artificial sweeteners
Experts have described the lust by bakers for artificial sweeteners as a misplaced priority. Instead of sugar and artificial sweeteners, they said, bakers could make use of natural sweeteners that are more healthy.
“Do you know that there are other substitutes to sugar and saccharine?” Obembe asked rhetorically as he listed the substitute for baking to include coconut sugar.
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“It can be extracted in the form of caramel. Then you have agave nectar.
“Maple syrup is another natural substitute for sugar derived from boiling a tree sap.
“They can get all these that are healthy instead of those adulterated sweeteners. They will just make it in form of syrup and add it to what they are doing. Very simple.”
Asked if the natural substitutes are cheaper, Obembe said: “Definitely, it is cheaper than sugar. Now, look at most of our fruits in the farms, everything is being wasted in the forest.
“That is why we nutritionists, somebody like me, I’m advocating for post-harvest losses. Look at all the farmers, some of them do 30 acres, 40 acres. Once they don’t have the ability to harvest, they just take the ones they can eat and leave the rest to rotten.
“Look at the high cost of transportation which is worsening food scarcity. We don’t have a good means of transportation and almost all the rural roads are bad. All these have to be put into consideration.
“I always tell people that nutrition is the foundation of every human’s health.
You can’t do it without a nutritionist because the information we give is on healthy food and lifestyle. Most of these health challenges are just lifestyle diseases.”
On her part, Dr. Kavita Rao wrote: “While it’s true that eating too much added sugar isn’t good for your health, there are many natural sweeteners and flavors that can enhance food without the need for artificial additives. Raw honey, stevia, vanilla, and cinnamon are all excellent choices.
“Try to get creative with whole food recipes in order to discover the potential of naturally flavored food and retrain your taste buds to enjoy natural sweeteners in small quantities.”
NAFDAC bans saccharin
The National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) recently shut down a bakery for using unfortified sugar and banned bromate in Sokoto State.
The NAFDAC State Coordinator, Mr Garba Adamu, said the bakery was detected during a special raid by agency officials.
“We discovered that the bakery was using saccharine, an unregistered foreign sugar, as sweetener along with banned bromate in their productions.
“The items were seized for destruction, and the bakery is shut down until it complies with regulations and directives,” he said.
Adamu emphasised that only fortified registered sugar containing vitamin ‘A’ with micronutrients and other vitamins is allowed to be sold and consumed in Nigeria.
”This is a Federal Government policy enforced by NAFDAC and other government agencies to ensure that consumers get the maximum nutritional and other health benefits from the produced products.
”Six other bakeries were also sanctioned for poor hygiene as enforcement officers led by Mr Buhari Manzo scaled up the routine inspection visits to bakeries across the state.
”Bakeries are monitored to ensure that they don’t use saccharine or other banned items as a substitute to fortified regulated ingredients,” Adamu said.
The coordinator cautioned producers against using adulterated, counterfeit, unregistered, and expired items in their places, reiterating that NAFDAC would continue the enforcement at all times.
Adamu said the operation would be extended to local government areas as part of the agency’s efforts to ensure that hygienic foods are being sold and the right products were in circulation.
He called on the general public to be wary of patronizing unregistered products and always report any suspicious practices and contaminations to NAFDAC, and he reiterated the agency’s continues efforts to safeguard the health of the nation.
Last month, the agency reiterated its stern position on the use of saccharin why debunking a viral video alleging that it had advised consumers to avoid bread.
Director General of NAFDAC, Prof Christianah Adeyeye, said in a statement “The Nigerian Industrial Standard (NIS) does not permit the use of saccharine in bread.
“This is the same for the Codex General Standard for Food Additives (GSFA), an authoritative reference point for food additives, which also does not permit the use of saccharin in bread. Like other food additives, sweeteners usually undergo thorough risk assessments for safety by an Expert Body, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) before approval for use.”
Also speaking, a cardiologist, Dr Olusegun Joseph, said artificial sweeteners are safe when consumed in moderation because they are replacements for raw sugars. However, he said “we know now that the sweeteners come with their own baggage. Most of them, aspartame, saccharin, and the rest, studies have linked them with cancers, heart disease, heart attack and the rest. Some of them have also been linked with diabetes and of course, obesity as well because when those things are consumed, one wants to take more of them.”
He added: “What we advise is that if you’re going to take sugars, the natural sugars may be better. For example, instead of someone putting saccharin or aspartame in a drink, they are usually in sodas, the person can take sugary fruits. We know that diabetics should be careful about it because it can raise their blood sugar. But then, dealing with natural sugar, which are fruits, is much more regulated and smoother than the artificial sugars and sweeteners.
“So, by and large, they have their own baggage that they bring in and one has to be quite careful in consuming them.I usually wouldn’t advise people to consume the non-sugar sweeteners indiscriminately.”
-The Nation
