Skinny Store-bought bread
A simple sandwich often ends up being way more fattening than you’d even dream possible — once you put together the bread, the butter, the filling, and any condiments. People would be shocked to know just how something so simple and seemingly inconsequential can really pack on the pounds.
One way to help get sandwiches back to the more manageable healthy level (where we all thought they were anyway in the first place) is by using some of the new, lighter breads that are out there. They are coming in all varieties from white, to whole-wheat, to multi-grain to ancient grain, etc. It’s just a way of lightening up your lunches for you and / or your family.
To take an example, the bread pictured above, Dempster’s Thins, cuts down the fattening-power of those slices of bread down by basically half. 1 In the category of “every lil helps”, imagine the impact of that spread out over your morning toast and lunch sandwiches over a month or two. Many other bread manufacturers are making similar “thin” or “skinny” options now.
I suspect most versions are probably helping to achieve their “skinnyness” by dialling back the white sugar in the loaves — which need to be rolled back big time, anyway.
Additional calorie savings may be made by making the slices a bit thinner, or smaller, than usual. Some, like the official Weight Watchers bread2 (in Canada, anyway, made for them by Weston’s bakery), uses both these techniques but also introduces a lot of air to the slice — it can be hard to spread something on one of those slices without it ripping the bread. The Dempster’s Thins is denser (for the same ww points) and doesn’t suffer from that problem.
Now granted this is *not* artisanal bread by any stretch of the imagination. We’re talking just normal supermarket bread — it is what it is. There are, however, whole-grain varieties available.
If you’re trying to lighten up the lunches from time to time in your household, and have folks who regularly moan about just being allowed to have “regular” bread “for a change”, you might wish to consider these new lighter loaves which could solve both problems for you.
(And yes, I know, the terrible English on that bread label — “50% less calories” — drives me nuts, too.)
If you’d prefer lighter options for homebaked breads, see the two pieces on Skinny Homemade Bread and Skinny French Bread.
* PointsPlus™ calculated by PracticallyEdible.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
Dempster’s Thins white bread is just 2 Weight Watchers PointsPlus® (90 calories) per 2 slices; 5 points for 4 slices. Compare that to Dempster’s regular white (say, the Stays Fresh loaf), at 5 points (170 cal) per 2 slices, 9 points for 4 slices. You’re chopping the “fattening power” of that bread by more than half! ↩
Weight Watchers white bread, Canadian version: 2 Weight Watchers PointsPlus® per 2 slices; 5 points for 4 slices. ↩
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