In a world where almost everyone in the U.S.A. has reverted back to whole wheat bread, eating whole wheat breads from nearly as many different bakeries as there are brands of bread, is it possible to open the oven, so to speak, and find a really good tasting organic whole wheat bread? What about Whole Foods Organic Touch of Honey Whole Wheat Bread; how does it stack?
Whole Foods Organic Touch of Honey Whole Wheat Small Batch Bread ( Taste )
When Whole Foods describes this bread as “Touch of Honey,” they pull together the exact right description, as sure as a bumblebee gathers together pollen on its legs as it visits flowers. I was impressed with the taste of this bread.
Whole Foods Touch of Honey Whole Wheat Small Batch Bread has a sweet taste to it, which you taste immediately from start to finish. It’s not overwhelming, though. The blend of ingredients, including the touch of organic honey, is well done. If it weren’t for one particular ingredient, this Whole Foods bread is the bee’s knees.
Whole Foods Organic Touch of Honey Whole Wheat Small Batch Bread ( Ingredients )
Whole Foods takes the time to make a honeycomb of a bread, yet uses soy lecithin rather than organic soy lecithin as an emulsifier. When you consider the process soy lecithin that isn’t organic goes through, it’s difficult to agree with any reasons Whole Foods has for using it ( See Behind the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry and Many Soy Veggie Burgers Contain Toxic Hexane ).
Whole Foods uses another ingredient in this particular selection in its line of Small Batch Breads that’s not potentially dangerous like soy lecithin, but puzzling nonetheless: ascorbic acid. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of putting ascorbic acid ( vitamin c ) into a loaf of bread. Why would Whole Foods do that?
Ingredients: Organic whole wheat flour, water, organic vital wheat gluten, organic evaporated cane juice, organic cultured whole spelt flour, organic expeller pressed high oleic sunflower and/or safflower oil, sea salt, organic honey, organic vinegar, east, organic molasses, organic oat flour, lactic acid, organic barley malt, organic expeller pressed soybean oil,, ascorbic acid ( vitamin c ), soy lecithin ( emulsifier ), microbial enzymes.
Whole Foods Organic Touch of Honey Whole Wheat Small Batch Bread ( Price, Packaging & Conclusion )
Tell me where you can find a loaf of great tasting organic whole wheat bread for $2.99; and that’s for 22 ounces ( one pound six ounces ), 15 slices, of organic bread! You can’t buy over half the breads on the shelf, which aren’t even organic, for that price.
I like the packaging Whole Foods chose to use, particularly the inclusion of the bumblebee prominently featured atop the plastic wrapper. The colors are nice, a mustard-like yellow as the background for everything and April sky-like blue accents around the emblematic design of encircled wheat stalks, the wings and eyes of the ( honey ) bumblebee, and as a horizontal background strip underneath the bulleted word, “organic.” At first I thought it would have been a better idea to use black for the alternating stripes on the bumblebee; but the use of a plenty dark blue was a good idea instead, in my opinion too.
Other than Whole Foods stinging itself by using soy lecithin, especially now that organic soy lecithin is available in great quantity, and even more so because soy lecithin is a potential danger to health, Whole Foods Touch of Honey Whole Wheat Small Batch Bread is a great loaf of organic bread. I certainly recommend it, particularly to adults. ( The possibility of ) hexane exposure from residue in soy lecithin is more of a problem for developing young kids than grown adults, and the wheat gluten that’s in it is a potential problem for kids too.
Sources:
Cornucopia Institute, Behind the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry, http://cornucopia.org/soysurvey/OrganicSoyReport/behindthebean_color_final.pdf
Natural News, Many Soy Veggie Burgers Contain Toxic Hexane, http://www.naturalnews.com/028683_soy_burgers_hexane.html
