A NEW law covering wholemeal bread could mean shoppers have to check labels thoroughly to see what they are buying.
Many brands of bread claiming to be 'wholemeal' are in fact manufactured with refined white flour, but with a handful of wheat, rye or barley bran thrown in – and few, if any, loaves are made with completely wholemeal flour.
At present, Spanish law defines wholemeal bread as that which has been made 'with wholemeal flour', but does not specify the percentage of this type of flour which must be used.
'Wholemeal flour' is defined as the result of cereal grains being ground up and of which 'the composition corresponds with that of the wholegrain cereal grain'.
But again, it does not state what percentage of the wholegrain should be present in it.
This creates a legal loophole which allows bread, biscuits and other grain-based products to be legitimately labelled as 'made with 100% wholemeal flour', when in practice, the amount of '100% wholemeal flour' used is negligible.
For this reason, the ministry of food, agriculture and the environment is seeking to abolish the 34-year-old law covering wholemeal bread – Royal Decree, or Bill of Law number 1137 of May 23, 1984 – and create a new one 'adapted to current market demands' and aiming to 'provide sufficient information to the consumer to enable him or her to make informed choices'.
A draft of the new law, due out later this year, states that bread will be either labelled as '100% wholemeal bread' or simply 'wholemeal bread' only if it is made exclusively with wholemeal flour.
Where processed or refined flour, malted flour or standard white flour is used in part, bread must be labelled as 'made with X% wholemeal flour'.
The ministry is working on the new text at present, but it is not clear exactly when the law will come into force or how long manufacturers will have to adapt to the change in legislation.
