Parents Have Been Lying To Us About Bread Crust For Years, Dietitian Says

Parents, if you ever forced your kids to eat the bread crust on sandwiches because it was “healthy,” now would be a good time to apologize. Turns out you’ve been wrong all these years.

A registered dietitian told CNN that the common parental advice is actually a pretty pervasive myth. From a nutritional standpoint, your bread crust is barely different at all from the soft, fluffy interior.

Can any changes occur to the crust? If you brush with eggwash the outer skin of the bread before baking, like with brioche, then the nutrition content may change slightly. Other than that, the only difference between the inside and outside of a bread loaf is the presence of a compound called pronyl-lysine in the crust. It’s an antioxidant that can help fight cancer, but that tends to get cancelled out by the presence of acrylamide, a carcinogen that’s often produced when the brown crust is formed.

So parents, if you really want to get your kids to eat healthier bread, get them whole grain/multi-grain instead, and feel free to cut the crust off. The type of bread matters way more than whether the outer crust is consumed or not.