Healthy Bread That Could Save Your Life
by Sarah Wescott

Loaf fights cancer and helps heart. The first "superbread" that could help beat cancer and protect the heart hits the shelves today.

The new loaf is enriched with selenium following claims that British consumption of the essential micro-nutrient has fallen to "worryingly" low levels.

Scientists have proved that selenium can reduce breast cancer by up to 80 per cent and regulate blood pressure, yet it is one of the human nutrients in greatest shortage.

Now Waitrose is launching the selenium enriched bread, the latest in a growing bread of pharmaceutical foods to be offered to health-conscious consumers. Britons can already buy Intelligent Eating eggs which contain healthy fatty acid and even crisps containing the natural anti-depressant St John's Wort.

Other "pharma-foods" available in supermarkets are Tropicana orange juice enriched with calcium, pro-biotic drinks which claim to maintain a healthy gut and spreads containing plant substances which inhibit cholesterol.

A Waitrose spokeswoman said: "Selenium is crucial to our diet for the function of a strong immune system but our current consumption is relatively poor due to the lack of it in British soil. Our bread suppliers have worked very closely with farmers to develop a natural way of putting this trace element back into the soil just as Mother Nature intended. As a result, the wheat from this reinvigorated soil is then harvested and used to bake naturally-enriched selenium loaves. British consumption of selenium is at a worryingly low level. However consuming two to four slices of selenium-enriched bread each day would ensure a good intake of this essential micro-nutrient as part of a healthier diet."

The Foods Standards Agency has warned the average dietary intake of selenium has plummeted to half of what it was 20 years ago in the UK due to a steady depletion of the mineral in British soil.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool last year discovered that an increase in selenium intake improves immune function while many studies since the 1970s have shown that there is an inverse relationship between selenium intake and cancer mortality.

Studies have also indicated that selenium can also fight the development of advanced prostate cancer.

A trial in the US found those receiving selenium showed 50 per cent lower cancer mortality and 37 per cent lower total cancer incidence, with 63 per cent fewer cancers of the prostate and 58 per cent fewer cancers of the colon.

Food agency researcher John Arthur said, "The low concentration of selenium in an enriched loaf gives a lot of safety to consumers as toxic consumption of pill supplements could be achieved with just 20 pills, while the equivalent intake could only be achieved by eating 13 loaves a day."
Dail Express 14th February, 2005
Per www.nutrilaw.co.uk

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: I'm not a big fan of inordinate grain consumption, as most know, but if you are going to eat bread, you might as well eat this stuff. Selenium is vital for the body's functions to prevent cancer and other diseases. The mineralisation of our soils only gets worse, rather than better, due to over-intensive farming methods. Perhaps a time will come when we'll decide enough's enough and a comprehensive program to remineralise UK soils can get underway. In the meantime, Waitrose is your man, the Bread Dept., selenium soldiers.