This week’s mailbag brought an email from Chris Young, who’s running the Real Bread Campaign at a UK organization called Sustain.  Chris says that his group’s goal is to promote the consumption and location production, in the UK, of Real Bread “made with all natural ingredients and no artificial additives of any kind.”

Here at the WGC we’re more all-inclusive; we promote all kinds of whole grains. But we don’t think it’s a coincidence that Chris’s email arrived at the same time as one from Ron Donatelli at Silver Hills Bakery, inviting us to watch his new video. While we don’t usually feature individual companies here in the WGC blog, we’re sharing this video with you today because it touches on important recent themes.

First, the Real Bread theme. We checked our files to remind ourselves of how Silver Hills makes its bread. The first loaf we came across has the following ingredients: Organic Whole Sprouted Wheat, Raisin Nectar (raisin, water), Sesame Seeds, Water, Sun Flower Seeds, Vital Wheat Gluten, Barley Malt, Yeast, Sea Salt. Yup. Sounds like they’d meet Chris Young’s standards.

Second, it’s a factory tour. All of you who were drooling with jealousy when Kara described her recent Bob’s Red Mill factory tour can now live vicariously, with this look at a real bread factory. (I’m just as much of a factory-tour geek as Kara, I gotta confess.) And third, it’s just one more indication of how the concept of sprouted grain products is spreading, as described in last week’s guest blog.

People are taking a closer look at what’s in their food. It will be interesting to see how manufacturers reformulate, in the coming years, to respond to this trend toward clean labeling. (Cindy)