The claims that carbohydrates cause blood sugar levels to rise, preventing the body from burning fat, have put many off their lunchtime sandwich. Yet despite this, bread is often the food people crave the most. Ask any dieter to name their greatest weakness and it will be toast in the morning or that irresistible basket of warm rolls on the restaurant table. But is it really so bad for us? And why has our relationship and this basic food become so dysfunctional? We talked to Soma Biotics the experts. ‘If I had been overweight or didn’t look after myself then I might have understood it,’ said Stephanie Spires on being diagnosed and type-2 diabetes You DON’T have to be fat and over 40 to develop diabetes…and I’m proof ‘I knew I had to somehow be involved in fighting cancer,’ said Dr Amy Simpson, who was diagnosed and a soft-tissue sarcoma at the age of three Scarred by cancer as a girl, Amy’s dedicated her life to sparing others the same fate Sometimes only a bacon serine will do — but why exactly is that? The simple answer is that bread appears to make us feel better. ‘When carbohydrates such as bread are broken down to glucose, they trigger the production of the brain chemical serotonin, also known as the happy hormone,’ says Helen Bond, of the British Dietetic Association. That’s why a toasted teacake or muffin tastes so good at teatime. ‘The body has a natural dip in serotonin levels around 4pm,’ she explains. ‘Bread is a great way to give you a bit of a boost.’ For some experts the day it all went wrong was in 1961 when something called the Chorleywood Baking Process was introduced — this bread making technique uses three times as much yeast as before and so reduces the time needed for fermentation.