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Chapter 1: Why do people feel sick after eating bread today?
Okay, but when you say mill your own flour, that sounds really hard and intimidating. And if I'm a busy mom or I've got multiple kids, I don't have time to mill my own flour.
Oh, it takes seconds. You know, we have the right tools to do our yard work. We have the right tools to vacuum our carpet. We have the right tools to wash our clothes. We're not out there hand washing with a washboard anymore. I want to help people find food freedom. And people are finding just that. They don't just tolerate the bread. They're getting healed.
So many people say, I can't eat bread. I'm like, I agree. The bread in the store is making you sick, but not real bread. If we go back to making it the way God intended.
Bread is one of the most celebrated foods in human history. It's woven throughout scripture, shared around family tables for thousands of years, and has sustained entire civilizations. So why is it that today so many people feel like they can't eat it?
Why does a food that nourished generation after generation now leave so many people feeling bloated, inflamed, sluggish, and convinced they're better off avoiding it altogether? Maybe the problem isn't bread. Maybe it's what we've done to it.
My guest today is Culture Apothecary fan favorite Sue Becker, food scientist, author, educator, co-owner of The Bread Becker's, and founder of Real Bread Outreach. Her first interview in March of 2025 on this show went completely viral and sold out flour mills all over the country for months.
For more than 34 years, Sue has researched the connection between processed foods, especially modern flour, and the chronic health issues affecting millions of Americans. In this episode, Sue is here to answer all of your questions and how something as simple as changing your flower has transformed the health of countless families.
Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. If you're happy that Sue is back, make sure you leave that five-star review for us. Please welcome for a second time, Sue Becker to Culture Apothecary. Is the saying, the whiter the bread, the faster you're dead, true?
Yes, I think so.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of milling your own flour?
It's dead. It's dead flour. It has no real nutritional value. And what they try to put back in is all synthetic. Whole grains is one of the most nutrient-dense foods God's given us. But they strip away the bran, the germ, and leave just the protein and starch for the white flour and then try to fix it. And they don't fix it very well.
What exactly is wrong with the bread in America, and why is it the culprit for why almost everybody is sick? Like I was saying earlier, with the bran, that's loaded with vitamins, loaded with minerals, loaded with fiber. And then the germ is the life of the plant, life of the seed. It's loaded with vitamins and minerals as well, but vitamin E and essential fatty acids.
So when they strip that away, the white flour is only— For all practical purposes, protein and starch. God never intended us to eat it without all the vitamins and minerals and even more importantly, the fiber. That's a nutrient that I talk about a lot and a lot of people don't think of it as nutrient. They just go fiber, fiber, fiber. You know, what is it?
It's a carbohydrate that can't be digested through your normal digestive system. So it's dumped over in your colon and it's your cleaner upper. It's your get rid of the trash nutrient. I guess you can say that. And Dr. Dennis Burkett was a medical missionary back in the early 1900s, mid 1900s. And he is the one that put fiber on the map.
Up until that point, it was thought to have no real value except to just make you eliminate, you know, regulate your bowels. But he discovered that it was at the root of most of the common diseases that plague Americans. You know, constipation, irritable bowel, heart disease, cancer. He even attributed it to that with our lack of fiber.
You don't see that in other countries that eat lots of real whole foods and fruits and fresh fruits and vegetables. We are not digesting that bread very well because it's stripped of all the nutrients to help us do that. So it's causing stomach pain when you can't digest something.
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Chapter 3: How does modern bread differ from traditional bread?
And yeah, it's just causing lots of problems for people. You know, so many people say, I can't eat bread. I'm like, I agree. The bread in the store is making you sick, but not real bread. If we go back to making it the way God intended, it'll change your life. Did American bread always make people sick? No. Prior to the 1900s, the bread consumed in this country was made at home for the most part.
People had the capacity to mill their own grain at home or communities. I love bread as a communal type food. Communities were built up around the local miller. Once water power, animal power was discovered, then they created these bigger mills like grist mills and things like that that some people go and visit today. So communities were built up around that because they could mill
larger volumes of flour, but it was still freshly milled. They didn't strip anything away. And so people would go and buy their flour on a regular basis in smaller quantities, what they could use over time. A lot of people laugh and say, well, 25 pounds, you know, is a lot of flour, 50 pounds. They had large families.
They were a lot of times baking for farmhands and they were making all of their own bread. So yeah, prior to the 1900s, America was one of the healthiest nations in the world. And you can look at it statistically.
When the steel roller mills came on the scene that sifted the bran and germ away from the flour, producing this massive volumes of white flour, stripping it of all of its nutritional value, all of its fiber, those local millers went out of business. And everyone loved the white bread because it was fluffier. And every woman in America goes, hallelujah. I don't have to mill my own flour anymore.
You know, I remember years ago, Brad's grandfather moved in with us and I was milling my flour with my electric grain mill, you know, in my kitchen. And he was sitting over in the recliner and he did like this. He goes, I milled a lot of corn in my day. You know, so hallelujah. We don't have to do this anymore.
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Chapter 4: What health issues can be linked to processed bread?
Someone's going to make this food for us. And the bread was fluffier and whiter. And you can look at the statistics of the Health of America website. When those steel rolling mills came on the scene in the early 1900s, by 1910, local millers, they had displaced the local millers. White bread, white food, white flour was food for everybody.
You can look at the statistics of America's health and see it decline. 1900, we were one of the healthiest nations in the world. By 1920, we had dropped to like 78, 1960, you know, 80 something, 2000, 93 out of 100 countries surveyed. That's pretty alarming. And bread was one of the first foods to be altered, to be commercially processed and taken out of the home.
So then what is the solution? What are we supposed to do if people want to eat bread, but it's making them sick or it's making them fat or they're feeling like, oh, I have to be gluten-free?
Can I say it real bluntly? You need to buy a grain mill. I'm sorry. You can't get real bread in the regular grocery store. You might find some independent bakeries now because people are realizing that, hey, this is a real thing. We need to be milling our own flour, putting all the components of the wheat back in. But for the day in and day out, get a grain mill, mill your own flour at home.
Like I said, prior to the 1900s, that's the way it was done. And we were one of the healthiest countries in the world. And in the scriptures, I find bread verses everywhere. But to me, Deuteronomy 24, verse 6 is one of the most sobering. And it says, in those days, there was a God had laws for how to treat people, you know?
And He goes, when you borrow something from someone, you were to give them a pledge that, hey, I'm going to return what I borrowed from you, or I'm going to pay you back. So you gave them something of value for them to keep until you paid them back. And in God's Word, Deuteronomy 24, verse 6, it says this, "'Do not take a man's upper millstone as a pledge, for you would be taking his life.'"
Wow, that's pretty amazing that God equates, not Sue Becker, God equates the ability to mill your own grain, to make your own bread with your life, with your health. Jesus compared himself to bread.
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Chapter 5: How can milling your own flour improve digestion?
And he said, I am the real bread of life. He who comes to me, what? Shall be satisfied. And that's a pretty amazing verse. I know exactly where I was when I saw that verse coming. For the first time when it spoke to me the way I knew God was speaking to me. And it was pretty revealing.
Okay, but when you say mill your own flour, that sounds really hard and intimidating. And if I'm a busy mom or I've got multiple kids, it's like I don't have time to mill my own flour.
Oh, it takes seconds. I'm not talking a hand mill anymore. We have a wonderful thing called electricity now. So we have the fastest, easiest grain mill. The Wonder Mill is what I use. I love it. It's clean. You pour your grain in and in 30 seconds or less, you have a pound of flour, which is about six cups. That's more than enough to make your pancakes, make your bread. And get the right tools.
You know, we have the right tools to do our yard work. We have the right tools to vacuum our carpet. You know, we have the right tools to wash our clothes. We're not out there hand washing with a washboard anymore. So get the right tools. A grain mill is fast and easy. I have a big mixer. When my kids were at home, I used a mixer because I would make six loaves of bread at a time.
Or a bread machine for a busy person. That takes less than five minutes to mill your flour, dump all the ingredients in, and Hit a start button and come back to a baked loaf of bread.
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Chapter 6: What are the benefits of using freshly milled flour?
Everybody's got time for that. How do you want to spend your time? Going to the doctor all the time? Doing something else? Or eating and being satisfied?
What source of ailments have people cured by milling their own flour and then baking their own bread?
Yeah. Now I have to be careful because people say, oh, this bread is not a miracle cure. But when you provide your body with all the nutrients, almost all of the nutrients it needs, then your body can begin to heal itself. We've seen people totally heal, you know, constipation, of course, that's fiber. What do you want to do? Eat a piece of bread or take something like? Metamucil or whatever.
Exactly. I'd rather eat the bread. One of the first testimonies that came outside of my home was a lady called me one morning and said, my cholesterol dropped 85 points and I know it was the bread. I've been to three different doctors, three years trying to get this down. I was like, okay. So I pull out my biochemistry books and I'm like, what's in this bread that would do it?
Every nutrient there, lecithin, inositol, choline, vitamin B6, vitamin E, it's all there. And the scriptures tell us in Psalm 104, God gave bread man to strengthen and nourish the heart. Dr. Wilfred Schutt, another doctor that I studied, he used vitamin E to treat heart disease. No doctors would listen to him, but he, not too many anyway, but he was treating it successfully.
And he says, he didn't write books on milling your own flour, but when you read his works, he says when bread started being fractured, The bran and germ being removed. He said America lost one of the most potent anti-clotting agents that was in our food. And that's vitamin E. Iron. Oh, iron deficient anemia. So many people.
I mean, we've had people that were on iron transfusions, which is very painful to get in a matter of months.
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Chapter 7: How can people start milling their own flour at home?
One of my favorite things. And her story is on my podcast, Sue's Healthy Minutes. This one, I'm going to choke up because it was so hard to listen to. Her baby was born with a genetic disease, brittle bone disease. They found out in the womb, the baby had broken bones in the womb. And they discovered it. And so she had to have a C-section. And even during that, broke ribs.
They could only hold their little newborn on a pillow so it wouldn't break her bones. She had to have metal rods put in her legs so her femur wouldn't more easily break. The first three years of that little child's life, 30 bone breaks. Oh, my word. Now, the mom reached out to me. In one year of freshly milled flour, zero bone breaks. What do you do with that?
Did it reverse her genetic disorder? No. But you know what they told that mom when they put those metal rods in her femur? They said, these will probably last her for five years because she's not going to grow or probably even be able to walk maybe. They're having to change those rods now because that child is growing. She's walking. She says she's running. She's leading an almost normal life.
That's pretty amazing. I want to help people find food freedom. And we're finding that people are finding just that when they think they have to be gluten free and they discover that they really don't. That it is the white bread, the processed flour products in the store that is making them intolerant and sensitive and unhealthy.
You know, horrible, painful stomach and digestion and chronic, horrible diarrhea and irritable bowel, laying down villi. Even they say, oh, we've even had biopsies. And they're discovering that even though wheat has those gluten forming proteins.
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Chapter 8: What are the best practices for using freshly milled flour?
They can eat it if it's freshly milled with all the fiber and the nutrients to help them digest it correctly. And they're finding healing. They don't just tolerate the bread. They're getting healed. And, you know, Alex, since our last podcast, oh gosh, people come from all over the country. And they would say, I heard you on that podcast. Gluten's not the enemy, you know.
And this bread has saved my life. And one day, I don't always go to our store. You know, I'm not always there because I'm out doing things like this. But anyway, I was walking through the store and she heard my voice, this lady, older lady from Ohio. She grabbed my hand. She goes, you're Sue Becker. And I said, yes. Tears started coming down her face.
And she said, I drove from Ohio just to come to your store. This bread saved my life. She said, I was down to seven foods was all I could eat. Oh, my God.
gosh yes because that when you go when you eliminate a whole food group that jesus compares himself to something's wrong with that picture real whole grains are healing to the body and when you eliminate that and you eliminate fiber that's going to be dumped into your colon that feeds that good healthy microbiome that's there it changes your gut microbiome the next thing you know and they're
They're critical for helping you digest your foods, get rid of the toxins. The more toxic buildup we have, the more sensitive we come to all different kinds of foods. And so it changes that. And so then the next thing you know, you can't have dairy anymore. You can't have eggs. You can't have this. You're reacting to this and this and this and this.
And people are finding food freedom because they're healing their gut. And that's not the only testimony. Another lady stood up in our class and she said, I was down to eight foods. And now I can eat because the bread is cleaning their body out, getting rid of toxic buildup. Now they're not overreacting to all kinds of things and not just food, you know, other sensitivities as well.
So I love what I do because we're helping people find food freedom.
Have you noticed this Gen Z trend where guys wear one dangly earring? A guy just has one mysterious little pirate accessory. You'll see a guy ordering an iced matcha latte and he's got the single earring gently swaying like he just returned from a voyage across the Atlantic.
I always wanna ask them, you know, if you're that committed to aesthetics, are you at least committed to clean personal care products? Because a lot of the stuff people use every day, deodorant, toothpaste, floss, it's full of weird ingredients that you probably wouldn't voluntarily rub on your body if you knew what they were. So I like Zebra.
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