They say it’s good to eat the crusts of bread, right? But is the crust any healthier than the middle since it’s all the same bread?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: I had always thought this old saying was to keep kids from wasting precious foodstuffs, back when food was a scarcer commodity. But there have been studies showing that there are more antioxidants in the crust, probably developing due to the chemical changes affected by the “intensity of the thermal treatment.” See: Lindenmeier & Hofmann, “Influence of baking conditions and precursor supplementation on the amounts of the antioxidant pronyl-L-lysine in bakery products,” in the Journal of Agricultural Food and Chemistry, 2004 Jan 28;52(2):350-4, as well as other articles of theirs (references in MedLine).