It has happened to all of us at some point. You take a slice of bread, put it in the toaster, don't pay attention to the heat setting indicated by the dial, and suddenly, when you retrieve it after hearing the sound of the toast popping up, you realize it's been toasted too much: with some parts burnt black and others, not so much. What do you do? Do you eat it? Do you scrape off the black part and try to save the golden part? Or do you put another slice in the toaster, lowering the power so that the slice of bread comes out all golden without any black parts? Nutritionally, the recommendation is the third option, and we'll explain why.When a slice of bread goes from golden to dark brown or black, the taste of the bread changes, it will be unpleasant to the palate, but in addition, "in the process of toasting towards black, aggressive phenomena of thermal degradation have occurred, which can lead to the formation of harmful compounds for health", states dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols. One of the most studied compounds is the dreaded acrylamide, which is generated especially in starchy foods when cooked at high temperatures, meaning above 120°C. By starchy foods we mean french fries, cookies, cereals, cakes, pies, pizzas, sandwiches, wraps, crepes, waffles, bread. And it can not only happen with the toaster, we can also blacken foods with or without starch (meat carries the same risk) with the oven or the pan. To understand what acrylamide is and why we should fear it, we rely on what the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has explained, which has said that acrylamide is a genotoxic and potentially carcinogenic compound. "If we eat a toast that is too well done one day, it will not cause us an illness immediately; the advice is to avoid eating it repeatedly over the years", says Grífols, and, for her part, dietitian-nutritionist Anna Costa affirms that it accumulates in the body, and therefore it must always be avoided.We also lose our taste

Besides the appearance of acrylamide with toasting, there are other qualities we lose when we eat an overcooked slice of bread, which are the organoleptic ones. It is not the same to eat a well-toasted slice of bread, that is, uniformly golden brown, on which extra virgin olive oil will slide well, and we can rub tomato on it so it becomes well soaked, than to bite into a blackened slice, which will make it impossible to put any food on top properly. To continue, the original nutritional qualities of bread also disappear. "So not only do undesirable compounds appear, but nutrients that were initially present also degrade," states the dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols, who recalls that in the United Kingdom the Food Standards Agency has popularized the message “golden, not burnt” (golden, not burnt) so that the population understands that bread and its derivatives should be eaten this color, and thus they aim to reduce exposure to acrylamide. For all this, if the slice of bread you have toasted has turned black instead of golden brown, do not scrape it to save it; the advice is to try again with a new one, at a lower temperature, so that it is only golden brown. Golden brown, yes; burnt, no.

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Bread has become the scapegoat because carbohydrates and gluten have become the villains. "Good bread isn't the demon of food, it doesn't make you fat, and it doesn't have bad carbohydrates, as misinformation spread through social media would have you believe," say baker Jordi Morera and nutritionist Anna Grífols, who have just published the book Long life in bread. Healthy carbohydrates (Efadós publishing house) to defend it.

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