Twelve Grains or, ‘Who Gives a Crap?’

Bread may have become entirely too complicated for me. Yesterday, in a little grocery store I was buying a plunger (the irony has not escaped me, being that this post is about especially grainy, high fiber bread), and I thought I’d pick up some bread for the house. Normally, I just go for a good loaf of the San Francisco sour dough – I’m the sort of guy who tends to find something he likes and sticks to it ninety percent of the time. But some months back I met with a nutritionist (free consultation at my gym, and I do like me some free consultations), who mentioned that I probably wasn’t getting enough fiber and went on too tell me how wonderful it was and how great my (insert skin, body, bowels, etc) would be.

What little about fiber I actually took in from her speech seemed rational to me and I’ve been trying to incorporate a little more into my diet. Still, I’m finding some elements of the selection process absurd. Oroweat, for example, has an eight-grain bread and a twelve grain bread.

I must have wasted at least ten minutes of my life looking at these two products, trying to decide how many grains I really needed. The obvious thing would say that more grains is better, right? (This is based off a classic ‘more is better,’ which holds up enough to be reliable where food stuffs are concerned.) But why is it better? Maybe my body can only handle eight grains at a time? Maybe the whole system is screwed with those extra four grains? And then, I’m super weary of a product, the twelve grain, which supposedly has more variety and yet costs the same? That’s some bullshit, right? If I buy the eighteen year scotch over the twelve, I know I’m paying more, because I’m getting more in quality. Maybe it’s like when you buy the mixed nuts, instead of just the peanuts and it’s still like seventy percent peanuts anyhow making you wonder if they think you’re the type of idiot to be disctracted by a cashew.

So how many grains does one need, really? Are there people out there saying, “I’m really more of an eight-grain type of guy, can’t be bothered by those four extra grains. It’s greedy, if you ask me. Nah, eights all a man needs.” there can’t be an actual difference, right? This really shouldn’t be something I need to invest more time in.