New Guidelines for Baking Bread

The Food Safety and Standards (Labelling and Display) Second Amendment Regulations, 2022, have been made public by the FSSAI. These laws will be effective and applied to the labelling of different kinds of bread from May 2023 onwards. Read more...

Sheela Krishnaswamy
Sheela Krishnaswamyhttps://thip.me/32BLvwP
Sheela Krishnaswamy is a Registered Dietitian with 38 years of professional experience in the clinical, corporate and communication spaces. She was trained in India and overseas. She is active in national and international dietetic associations. She has had a media presence for the last 25 years. Formerly, a successful nutrition entrepreneur, an editor, a public speaker and a blogger, currently she works independently as Nutrition & Wellness Consultant, Advisor, Anchor, Writer and Corporate Trainer.

Last Updated on November 10, 2022 by Neelam Singh

Bread is a convenient and popular aspect of Indian breakfast. Eaten either as toast or plain, along with egg or cheese or butter or baked beans, bread is used in many urban homes when there is lack of time to prepare elaborate breakfast in the morning. 

Recently the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) brought in labelling guidelines for bread manufacturers. According to these guidelines, bread makers need to ensure that whole wheat bread is made of at least 75% whole wheat flour (atta) and brown bread is made of at least 50% whole wheat flour. 

Currently, there is a lot of ambiguity surrounding bread ingredient labels. Bread made of maida has ‘wheat flour’ listed as an ingredient, which is not entirely incorrect, except that this ‘wheat flour’ is actually refined. Similarly, brown bread is sometimes made of maida and coloured with caramelised sugar or some other ingredient to give it brown colour. This too can be misleading to the consumers. Ragi/millet bread usually contains miniscule amounts of this ingredient and more of maida. Even multi grain bread in most cases has more maida than other grains. In other words, maida (refined wheat flour) is the main ingredient in most breads available in the market with small quantities of other healthful ingredients thereby lending very little nutrition to the consumer. There is also no standardisation of ingredients for breads. 

The new guidelines from FSSAI which will be enforced from May 2023 will be a boon to consumers. The standardisation of the main ingredient in bread (wheat flour) will ensure that the consumers know which bread to purchase for better health.

So, always choose your breads after reading the labels. 

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