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Subway's "wheat" bread also used to be white bread with caramel coloring. They changed it to be whole grain under the US FDA definition (minimum 51% whole grain

Subway's "wheat" bread also used to be white bread with caramel coloring. They changed it to be whole grain under the US FDA definition (minimum 51% whole grains) in 2014. https://www.subway.com/en-us/menunutrition/nutrition/alwaysimproving https://www.subway.com/en-us/menunutrition/nutrition/alwaysi... Edit: Found the ingredient lists. Ingredients are in order of quantity from greatest to least. "9-Grain Wheat" bread recipe in 2012: > Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, high fructose corn syrup, whole wheat flour, contains 2% or less of the following: wheat gluten, oat fiber, yeast, soybean oil, wheat bran, calcium blend (calcium carbonate, vitamin D3), salt, rolled wheat, dough conditioners (datem, sodium stearoyl lactylate), yeast nutrients (calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate), degermed yellow corn meal, rolled oats, rye flakes, caramel color, triticale flakes, parboiled brown rice, refinery syrup, honey, barley flakes, flaxseed, millet sorghum flour, flavor (yeast extract, salt, natural flavor) https://web.archive.org/web/20120121203702/http://www.subway.com/Nutrition/Files/usProdIngredients.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20120121203702/http://www.subway... Note that the recipe contained more high fructose corn syrup than whole wheat flour. Current "9-Grain Wheat" bread recipe: > Whole wheat flour, enriched flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yeast, sugar, grain and seed blend (wheat, rye, yellow corn, oats, triticale, brown rice, barley, falx seed, millet, sorghum), wheat gluten, contains 2% or less of: salt, soybean oil, malted barley flour, cultured wheat flour, sunflower lecithin, dough conditioners (ascorbic acid, enzymes) https://www.subway.com/-/media/USA/Documents/Nutrition/usProdIngredients.pdf https://www.subway.com/-/media/USA/Documents/Nutrition/usPro...

artificial 6y ago
Ah, good old penny pinching corporate behavior! Reminds me of Taco Bell and their “beef”. How much meat needs to be in a product to be meat? More than 35%! https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_813185 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_813185
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  According to Taco Bell, it's 88%, not 35% -- and the plaintiffs in that suit settled without disputing the 88% figure, changing their story to say, more or less, "all we wanted was for Taco Bell to actually give us the real number." https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/04/22/135539926/with-lawsuit-over-taco-bells-mystery-meat-is-a-mystery-no-longer https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/04/22/1355399... 12% seasoning is still a lot by weight, to be sure -- it's something like four tablespoons per pound of ground beef -- but a lot of these "fast food companies aren't using real food!" stories get overly sensationalized, and this one never came across like it had a whole lot of there there.
  - tzs 6y ago
    At least beef is the only meat in it. If a restaurant wants to reduce the amount of beef in something to save money, as a lacto ovo bovo porco vegetarian I'd much rather see them compensate with more seasoning than by adding some cheaper meat like turkey or chicken like many places do.
- markdown 6y ago
  Wait till you find out that soy milk doesn't actually contain any milk and is just soy juice.
bredren 6y ago
I did a gig for a statewide public school cafeteria purchasing portal and all of the wheat bread they bought was 51%. I think there was some mandate around supplying “wheat” and this met the threshold.
- commoner 6y ago
  Yes, you're right. The FDA allows the following health claim to be used for marketing "whole grain foods" that "contain 51 percent or more whole grain ingredient(s) by weight per reference amount customarily consumed (RACC)": > Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods and low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol, may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/health-claim-notification-whole-grain-foods https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/health-clai... Products that are 100% whole grain almost always explicitly say "100% whole grain" (or wheat) on the packaging. All foods served in school breakfasts and lunches in the US must be "whole-grain rich" as of the 2014-15 school year, with the presence of the FDA health claim being one of the approved ways to confirm that a food is "whole-grain rich": https://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/whole-grain-resource https://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/whole-grain-resource Subway has always been marketed as a healthy fast food option, but its "9-Grain Wheat" bread was carefully named and advertised without being described as "whole grain" or "whole wheat". Many consumers assumed that "9-Grain Wheat" was whole wheat bread, when the ingredients told a different story before 2014.
shakna 6y ago
There's also the chicken/soy kerfuffle [0], where _Canadian_ versions of the product showed their chicken to only be about half chicken. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_(restaurant)#Soy_protein_in_chicken_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_(restaurant)#Soy_protei...
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I've noticed that VitaminWater has a warning on it that you shouldn't drink more than two bottles of it per day in Canada. What's up with that? /Stopped eating Subway because the bread clogs me up.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    It's actually SugarWater unless you get a diet variety.
  - LegitShady 6y ago
    https://www.thestar.com/business/2011/01/19/vitaminwater_delicious_and_not_nutritious.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2011/01/19/vitaminwater_del... >In reality, a 591 ml bottle of Vitaminwater contains about 33 grams of sugar, while a 355 ml can of Coke contains 39 grams. It's got a lot of sugar unless you drink the artificial sweetener version.
sjwright 6y ago
It still boggles my mind that wheat is considered a health food. Even so called ‘whole wheat’ is mostly sugar in the form of starch polysaccharides combined with a bit of protein and unremarkable amounts of fibre. I'm not saying that sucrose isn't worse than starch. Obviously pure sugar is worse. Fructose is significantly worse. But it's wrong to think of bread as some kind of health food when in reality it's predominantly composed of well-disguised glucose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour#Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour#Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch
- zZorgz 6y ago
  I buy whole wheat bread with very little sugar, although it is easier to find wheat bread with lots of added sugar and even more so in restaurants. I guess I would consider it as a good part of my balanced nutrition, not so much healthy by itself.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    Your "low sugar" bread is only low sugar until you eat it. Whole wheat is mostly polymers of glucose sugar and it's turned into sugar when your body digests it. Bread is a good source of calories but offers little in the way of nutrition. In fact, in terms of its phytic acid content, wheat germ is functionally an anti-nutrient because it impairs bodily absorption of iron, zinc and calcium. And while bread can be included in a healthy diet, few people in the western world are suffering from a lack of dietary calories. For anyone who is currently consuming more calories than they need, bread has no nutritional upside.
- FrankBooth 6y ago
  It’s not unhealthy. But believe whatever pseudoscience makes you feel nice.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    Pseudo-science, seriously? Tell me then, what about bread qualifies it as a health food? It's mostly glucose polysaccharides that are rapidly digested by your body into plain old glucose. Yes, there is also some amount of protein and fibre, but not in remarkable quantities. Not to mention the non-trivial amounts of phytic acid in wheat germ which can impair bodily absorption of iron, zinc and calcium.[0] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325021/
ip26 6y ago
There's so many weasel terms in bread. Even Wonderbread is Wheat bread, and multigrain could just mean wheat plus corn...
- commoner 6y ago
  "Multigrain" is the most confusing term. A bread can have more than one type of grain and still not be whole-grain. Most multigrain breads in the US that are also whole-grain will specifically say so. The Whole Grains Council (which created the Whole Grain Stamp icon used on the labels of US food products) has a guide for determining which words refer to whole-grain foods, and which do not: https://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/identifying-whole-grain-products https://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/identifying-...
dehrmann 6y ago
> "9-Grain Wheat" Yeah, n-grain and multigrain have nothing to do with whole grains, but people think they do.
antonvs 6y ago
> Subway's "wheat" bread also used to be white bread with caramel coloring. That's hilarious. And also a total indictment of US mass market food culture.

artificial 6y ago

Ah, good old penny pinching corporate behavior! Reminds me of Taco Bell and their “beef”. How much meat needs to be in a product to be meat? More than 35%! https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_813185 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_813185

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
According to Taco Bell, it's 88%, not 35% -- and the plaintiffs in that suit settled without disputing the 88% figure, changing their story to say, more or less, "all we wanted was for Taco Bell to actually give us the real number." https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/04/22/135539926/with-lawsuit-over-taco-bells-mystery-meat-is-a-mystery-no-longer https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/04/22/1355399... 12% seasoning is still a lot by weight, to be sure -- it's something like four tablespoons per pound of ground beef -- but a lot of these "fast food companies aren't using real food!" stories get overly sensationalized, and this one never came across like it had a whole lot of there there.
- tzs 6y ago
  At least beef is the only meat in it. If a restaurant wants to reduce the amount of beef in something to save money, as a lacto ovo bovo porco vegetarian I'd much rather see them compensate with more seasoning than by adding some cheaper meat like turkey or chicken like many places do.
markdown 6y ago
Wait till you find out that soy milk doesn't actually contain any milk and is just soy juice.

bredren 6y ago

I did a gig for a statewide public school cafeteria purchasing portal and all of the wheat bread they bought was 51%. I think there was some mandate around supplying “wheat” and this met the threshold.

commoner 6y ago
Yes, you're right. The FDA allows the following health claim to be used for marketing "whole grain foods" that "contain 51 percent or more whole grain ingredient(s) by weight per reference amount customarily consumed (RACC)": > Diets rich in whole grain foods and other plant foods and low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol, may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/health-claim-notification-whole-grain-foods https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/health-clai... Products that are 100% whole grain almost always explicitly say "100% whole grain" (or wheat) on the packaging. All foods served in school breakfasts and lunches in the US must be "whole-grain rich" as of the 2014-15 school year, with the presence of the FDA health claim being one of the approved ways to confirm that a food is "whole-grain rich": https://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/whole-grain-resource https://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/whole-grain-resource Subway has always been marketed as a healthy fast food option, but its "9-Grain Wheat" bread was carefully named and advertised without being described as "whole grain" or "whole wheat". Many consumers assumed that "9-Grain Wheat" was whole wheat bread, when the ingredients told a different story before 2014.

shakna 6y ago

There's also the chicken/soy kerfuffle [0], where _Canadian_ versions of the product showed their chicken to only be about half chicken. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_(restaurant)#Soy_protein_in_chicken_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_(restaurant)#Soy_protei...

reaperducer 6y ago
I've noticed that VitaminWater has a warning on it that you shouldn't drink more than two bottles of it per day in Canada. What's up with that? /Stopped eating Subway because the bread clogs me up.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  It's actually SugarWater unless you get a diet variety.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  https://www.thestar.com/business/2011/01/19/vitaminwater_delicious_and_not_nutritious.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2011/01/19/vitaminwater_del... >In reality, a 591 ml bottle of Vitaminwater contains about 33 grams of sugar, while a 355 ml can of Coke contains 39 grams. It's got a lot of sugar unless you drink the artificial sweetener version.

sjwright 6y ago

It still boggles my mind that wheat is considered a health food. Even so called ‘whole wheat’ is mostly sugar in the form of starch polysaccharides combined with a bit of protein and unremarkable amounts of fibre. I'm not saying that sucrose isn't worse than starch. Obviously pure sugar is worse. Fructose is significantly worse. But it's wrong to think of bread as some kind of health food when in reality it's predominantly composed of well-disguised glucose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour#Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour#Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch

zZorgz 6y ago
I buy whole wheat bread with very little sugar, although it is easier to find wheat bread with lots of added sugar and even more so in restaurants. I guess I would consider it as a good part of my balanced nutrition, not so much healthy by itself.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Your "low sugar" bread is only low sugar until you eat it. Whole wheat is mostly polymers of glucose sugar and it's turned into sugar when your body digests it. Bread is a good source of calories but offers little in the way of nutrition. In fact, in terms of its phytic acid content, wheat germ is functionally an anti-nutrient because it impairs bodily absorption of iron, zinc and calcium. And while bread can be included in a healthy diet, few people in the western world are suffering from a lack of dietary calories. For anyone who is currently consuming more calories than they need, bread has no nutritional upside.
FrankBooth 6y ago
It’s not unhealthy. But believe whatever pseudoscience makes you feel nice.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Pseudo-science, seriously? Tell me then, what about bread qualifies it as a health food? It's mostly glucose polysaccharides that are rapidly digested by your body into plain old glucose. Yes, there is also some amount of protein and fibre, but not in remarkable quantities. Not to mention the non-trivial amounts of phytic acid in wheat germ which can impair bodily absorption of iron, zinc and calcium.[0] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325021/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325021/

ip26 6y ago

There's so many weasel terms in bread. Even Wonderbread is Wheat bread, and multigrain could just mean wheat plus corn...

commoner 6y ago
"Multigrain" is the most confusing term. A bread can have more than one type of grain and still not be whole-grain. Most multigrain breads in the US that are also whole-grain will specifically say so. The Whole Grains Council (which created the Whole Grain Stamp icon used on the labels of US food products) has a guide for determining which words refer to whole-grain foods, and which do not: https://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/identifying-whole-grain-products https://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/identifying-...

dehrmann 6y ago

> "9-Grain Wheat" Yeah, n-grain and multigrain have nothing to do with whole grains, but people think they do.

antonvs 6y ago

> Subway's "wheat" bread also used to be white bread with caramel coloring. That's hilarious. And also a total indictment of US mass market food culture.