People urged to love their loaf as National Bread Week begins

Love you loaf is the message from breadmakers around the country as National Bread Week gets underway today.

This is the first time the week has been marked and it has been organised by the baking industry to celebrate the quality, heritage and benefits of Irish bread. Announcing the initiative, chef and author Rachel Allen said life would be "very, very dull without bread".

She started cooking by baking brown bread with her father, and cakes and biscuits with her sister and mother. "I truly believe that that was what ignited my love of food and my love of cooking...Baking is the most wonderful way to get children involved and I think that when children are more involved in the preparation of food they are going to be more excited about the food that they eat." She encouraged people to tweet photographs of their bread this week with the hashtag #loveyourloaf.

Clinical nutritionist and dietician Dr Mary McCreery said she hoped the focus on bread would help dispel some myths. “One of the really big myths is that bread causes bloating and other digestive problems. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever,” she said, pointing to reviews done by British Nutrition Foundation which found no evidence of bloating or gastro-intestinal discomfort after bread consumption. “But if you start eating a lot of fibre and if you start eating very coarse brown bread it can cause a little bit of upset.”

She said it was also a myth that wheat allergies were on the increase. “There’s no scientific evidence to support that,” she said. While many people claimed to have an intolerance to gluten, the protein found in wheat, she said if they were questioned, they often thought gluten was a carbohydrate.“Research shows that people have a perceived allergy or intolerance but they actually don’t have an allergy. A lot of that is driven by all these false tests that you get in chemist shops,” she said.

“ If you thought you did have a genuine food allergy, you need to go to an immunologist and get it diagnosed properly because there is more to it than just not eating gluten.” It is estimated that just one per cent of the Irish population has coeliac disease. Dr McCreery said bread was good for us , contrary to popular belief, and provided protein, folic acid and nutrients such as dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Many activities have been planned to mark National Bread Week. Tomorrow, baker Patrick McCloskey will attempt to make the biggest Irish soda bread, in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin.

See nationalbreadweek.ie for details of other events.