The president of the Institute for Nutrition and Food Research said that more than 90% of the bread produced and consumed in the country is white bread, while in the developed world, 95% of the bread consumed is whole wheat bread. Dr. Jalal Mirzarazzaz said that one of the main problems existing in the country is the bread being consumed. He said that more than 90% of the bread consumed in the country is white bread type while in the developed countries 95% of the bread is of the whole wheat type.

The issue of bread and its health has been discussed for many years but so far no practical steps have been taken to address the problems.

The head of the Institute for Nutrition and Food Research said that whole bread is a type of bread made from whole wheat and referring to the issue raised at the Eastern Mediterranean Health Ministers Summit, stated: WHO organization representative at the summit emphasized the special attention to bread and its methods of cooking in Iran and believed that wheat used in flour making should be reviewed.

 According to statistics provided by the WHO representative, we isolate and dispose of 28% of wheat nutrients through bran in the country, he said.

The head of the institute of Nutrition Research and food industry of Iran criticized the high percentage of bran in the country, and noted: by doing bran, we discard the wheat nutrients and turn the whole wheat flour into white flour then the same nutrients as Iron, Zinc, Vitamin D and …, which are integral to people’s health, are turned into white flour with a wrong method that has been criticized by international organizations.

The Head of Shahid Beheshti University School f Nutrition, pointing out that the high salt content in bread is another problem, stated: salt consumption per capita in developed countries is 5 grams per day, but it is 13 grams per day in our country meaning every Iranian on average, consumes salt at about 2.5 times the world average.

 He said according to the latest statistics every Iranian consumes an average of 320 grams of bread a day, so every Iranian receives about 3-5 grams of salt only by eating bread during a day, which is high.

Mirza Razzaz advised of the re-examination of bread consumption per capita in the country and said the results of the study would be announced in the next few months.

Criticizing the method of bread baking, he stated: Bread that is overly exposed to direct fire and roasted because of the production of toxic substances such as acrylamide, increases the risk of cancer, although toast tastes better, it also needs to change the taste and culture of people’s health.

One of the tyopics we will be discussing in the new Nutrition Institute is the public health education and encouraging people to use whole bread, he said. We will have to cook and produce bread so that the community will move towards using whole bread.