Sometimes a maida bread can be a better option than a wholewheat loaf: Things to know before buying ‘healthy’ bread

The word wholewheat tells you something about the flour, but it does not tell you everything about the finished product. Packaged bread can contain sugar, jaggery, honey, oils or fats, seeds, dairy ingredients, fibre additives and other ingredients. FSSAI’s standards allow several of these ingredients in bread. So imagine two loaves: one is a relatively simple white bread made largely from maida, while another is marketed as a premium multigrain or wholewheat loaf but contains several added ingredients and substantially more sugar or sodium. In that specific comparison, the plain maida bread could be the more straightforward choice, even though it would still generally provide less fibre than genuine wholewheat bread. The point is not that maida has suddenly become healthier. It is that “wholewheat” is not a complete nutritional assessment.