Remarkable: Albert Heijn revamps its bread range with healthier bread and lower prices
Albert Heijn is giving its bread range a major overhaul. The supermarket wants to make a large proportion of its breads healthier and lower their prices. Good news in itself, of course, but isn’t there a small catch somewhere? Because why were the breads more expensive in the first place, for example?
We’ve always found Albert Heijn’s bake-off rolls a bit of a mystery. We really have no idea what’s in those things. No, the loaves from the bakery section look a lot better. At least we can read the ingredients and nutritional values on the packaging. From next week onwards, we’ll at least see less excessive salt content on the bags of 10 loaves. Reducing the amount of salt in bread products has been an action point that Albert Heijn has been implementing since 2018. This is how they want to offer their customers healthier bread without them noticing much difference in the taste.
More sustainable bread range
Another change: even more wholemeal breads will be added to the shelves in the bakery section. Albert Heijn also understands (of course) that white bread contains considerably fewer healthy dietary fibres than wholemeal varieties. With this change, the supermarket is also responding to sustainability concerns. The grain used in all floor breads and 3 types of Liefde en Passie breads will henceforth come from the Netherlands. Add to that the fact that the bread bags will be easier to recycle from next week onwards, because: no more stickers.
E-numbers and additives
Back to the ‘healthier bread’ part. Yes, of course it’s positive that Albert Heijn is making these changes to its bread range. Less salt is good for us, as are more fibres. But can we really call supermarket bread healthy? Aren’t these products highly processed anyway, with E-numbers and all sorts of other additives? The floor breads and Liefde en Passie breads contain relatively few E-numbers. Floor bread contains E300 (flour treatment agent), while no E-numbers appear in Liefde en Passie breads. But take a look at a simple AH wholemeal loaf: emulsifier (mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids [E471], mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, esterified with monoacetyl and diacetyl tartaric acid [E472e]), flour treatment agent (ascorbic acid [E300])… Albert Heijn, couldn’t you improve that a little?
For a simple, good loaf of bread, you really only need 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast. So the fewer ingredients listed on the bread packaging, the better. A Les Pains Boulogne Whole already contains 17 ingredients. And a Liefde & Passie Bread spelt wholemeal contains 14. Of course, lots of ingredients result in a longer shelf life, which is useful for supermarket bread. But still… four times as many ingredients is quite a lot, isn’t it?
Lower price
What we find even more remarkable, actually, is the reduced price. Albert Heijn has ‘reduced the price of its most beloved breads, the popular Les Pains breads, from €2.79 to €1.99’. But why were these breads more expensive in the first place? Is it a charitable act by Albert Heijn? Or has the recipe been changed so substantially that it is now cheaper to make the bread? We’re curious to find out.
To end on a slightly optimistic note: the price reduction is at least good news for our wallets. You can now stock up on enough bread to try the latest bread salads (sparerib, smoked sausage and club sandwich).
Also read:
- Albert Heijn’s new bread snacks are so bad they’ll make you cry
- 10x our favourite cheap snacks from Albert Heijn
- Tested: the AH To Go caprese sandwich is one big failure
Source + image: Albert Heijn
