Why bread and pasta leaves us bloated

We all know that bread and pasta can make us feel bloated—and now scientists have figured out why this happens.

We don’t just feel bloated when we eat bread and other wheat produce, we also put on the pounds—and it’s because the food changes our metabolism.

If we make bread a cornerstone of our diet, we tend to cut back on healthier options and our metabolism slows, and we burn off fewer calories.

Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Human Life and Ecology tested various diets on a group of mice that preferred foods like wheat, bread, and rice over other food options.

Although their total calorie intake didn’t increase, the mice’s body weight and fat mass went up, but not from overeating, but by expending less energy.  The diet was also changing the biological profile of the bread-eating mice: they had higher levels of fatty acids in the blood and lower levels of essential amino acids. In the liver, fat accumulation increased, and this accelerated the activity of genes linked to fatty acid production and lipid transport.

The good news was that when wheat flour was removed from the diet, both body weight and metabolic abnormalities improved quickly.

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