Why are starch ingredients in America processed?

15 comments

1. > So why do food companies in America add these vitamins and minerals?
   >

   Have you considered the *positives* to adding vitamins and minerals to these foods? [Fortification goes back decades](https://foodinsight.org/is-food-fortification-necessary-a-historical-perspective/) as a method of dealing with vitamin deficiencies and has been proven over time to be effective and safe. “Eat a more balanced diet!” you say? Yeah, we thought of that too, but it turns out putting a trace amount of folic acid into a few things had huge benefits.

   You can get all sorts of pasta here. You can buy European made, you can buy locally made, you can buy fresh pasta, you can buy the boxes of store-brand that are processed more than others.

   [Here’s a good article](https://www.bonappetit.com/story/bleached-vs-unbleached-flour) about why flour is bleached. We don’t make much fresh pasta here, but we do a ton of baking, so the average homemaker is more likely to have all purpose bleached flour at home. You can find unbleached flour, if you want that.

2. I disbelieve the first part, I’ve had pasta in Italy and France and it tastes no different.

3. It could be a labeling thing.

   “Enriched” pasta and rice has vitamins added. It was historically done to be certain very poor people who may be eating little or nothing outside of cheap rice and pasta wouldn’t develop vitamin deficiencies.

   Essentially no one in the modern US eats *that* badly anymore, even though food scarcity can be an issue for poor people.

   As far as bleached flour goes, I guess it may depend on your country. Bleached flour is essentially a “looks” and consistency thing for cooking. It adds a couple chemicals to the flour which make it whiter and slightly finer but also oxidizes the raw milled flour faster rather than just air drying it. The real issue is apparently if you have just straight milled flour it can be really inconsistent in ability to hydrate and whatnot. So you let it sit and dry and oxidize in the atmosphere. Which takes a longer time for consistency. It is adding a single item to oxidize and dry the flour faster than just air drying. So it makes flour cheaper but also changes some of the baking chemistry because it makes the flour a bit more acidic overall.

   Europe banned the practice. I have no idea if anywhere else does it.

   You can absolutely buy unbleached flour in the US, like at every grocery store of a decent size.

   It isn’t like we are “obsessed” with processing starches. It is that Europe used to do these things and is now “obsessed” with not doing them.

4. It’s restoring nutrients lost during processing, upon which some (or all) are added back to restore or enhance its original nutrient density.

5. While it is largely a problem of the past, these vitamins are added to help improve the health of people who are either picky eaters or so poor they cannot afford a nutritious diet. “Fortified” foods are better for people on the macro scale.

   The addition of Folic Acid in bread, cereals, and pastas was particularly effective in reducing birth defects of the spine and brain.

   I’m not sure I trust you data point of one person on subjective difference in taste.

6. As for the vitamins. Many US staple foods are enhanced for a reason.

   Corn used to be a staple food in the South and in Italy (cornbread, grits, polenta). Unfortunately corn doesn’t have free Niacin unless it’s processed with an alkali ( usually lye). Lack of this nutrient causes a disease called Pelegra.

   The same is true for many other foods, so a small amount of there essential nutrients are added to prevent these diseases.

7. > So why do food companies in America add these vitamins and minerals?

   It’s historical. Staple foods were enriched or fortified to counter dietary deficiencies, which at the time was a serious problem. And it worked brilliantly. Imagine using citrus to counter scurvy in the 1700s, it’s the same underlying concept.

8. About your friend’s comment, semolina flour may have been the difference they were noticing, not the actual flavor. Semolina flour is in slightly more expensive pasta products here, and tastes more “wheat” to me than cheaper pasta. It’s not a flavor, it’s a texture thing.

9. And here I was wondering what sort of processing went into my russet potatoes and winter squash.

10. We tend to fortify our food. Kids cereal is like 90% sugar and fortified stuff.

    The big one is Iodine to salt. Not to mention to prevent Rickets.

    You are kind of looking at this backward. The goal is to prevent a host of very preventable, life altering problems by simply adding a few key ingredients. It is actually critically important.

    You don’t want kids, or anyone, to get something crippling that is so easily avoided.

11. My local store has a mysterious premium store brand of pasta that is imported from Italy. It is not enriched. During the pandemic, for some reason, pasta was one of those foods that had supply chain issues. I normally buy (US Produced, enriched flour using) Barilla pasta. The store brand Italian Import pasta used non-enriched flour. The shapes exactly match. Gee, I wonder who is producing their Italian import pasta…

    I have literally made mixed pots of pasta between the two because I’m at the bottom of a box of pasta and I need to add some from the next bag. I can’t tell a difference between them, in terms of taste or texture. (And the price is almost the same, too.) At this point, I get what’s on sale and available in my prefered shapes. (Hey, what can I say: I like bow tie / farfalle pasta.)

    My guess is the pasta that was very “wheaty” was a more whole grain pasta than they were used to, or was just a fresh pasta versus a dried pasta. Fresh pasta does taste more “wheaty” than dried pasta.

    If you can add the vitamins, it’s easy and cheaper to add the vitamins, they have a positive impact on public health… and they don’t change the taste or the texture… why not? There are no downsides.

12. It’s important to note that you usually have the choice. There’s bleached flour, and there’s unbleached flour. There’s fortified pasta (you don’t taste that, though) and unfortified imports. There are a few exceptions. For instance, I think milk products and vegan alternatives MUST have vitamin D3 added.

    It’s true that American companies tend to be very eager about putting stuff into food, and rules are pretty lax. But it’s also true that American consumers are really big on choice, so you can usually pick what you like. It does require a bit more self-educating. I’m originally from Europe, and it took me many years to become a good shopper here in the US. But now that I’ve figured it out, I love the options I have here.

13. Look at a box of pasta and you’ll see the word “enriched.” That’s what the vitamins and minerals do: they add nutrients that are not naturally there.

    “Bleached” goes back to the early days of white bread. There was a time when white bread was considered more pure than wheat bread; “sanitized for your protection” and more wholesome and nutritious (again, “enriched”), despite the fact that a lot of the fiber had been removed. It’s a habit that’s stuck with us all this time.

14. So hi, food nerd here.

    Flour/wheat products are enriched because of large scale nutritional deficiencies found in parts of the US, UK and Canada from the 1920s to the 1940s. It was decided that white flour, which was the rich man’s flour of the 1800s as the extra processing was labor intensive, had lack of nutrients and the ability for the common person have white flour in their diet was the cause of said deficiencies.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208880/

    This made its way into pasta and most other wheat products Americans eat. Now it’s just the norm.

    Look up the history of bleached flour. That’s far from an American thing.

15. I love how the “get the real deal on fentanyl” ad was the first thing I saw when I opened this thread.