Food 101: Pretzel Nutrition Analyzed

We like butter-coated pretzels in Pennsylvania. Southern German and Swiss German immigrants who became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch introduced soft shaped pretzels with different shapes and pretzel bakery businesses. In fact, if you visit the town of Lititz in Pennsylvania, you can tour the first commercial hard pretzel bakery in the United States and buy some fresh-made pretzels. You can also buy fresh-made pretzels in some Amish stores in Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse, Pennsylvania. The German name "Brezel" may derive also from Latin bracellus (a medieval term for 'bracelet') or bracchiola ('little arms'). Within the Christian Church, pretzels were regarded as having religious significance for both ingredients and shape. Pretzels made with a simple recipe using only flour and water could be eaten during Lent when Christians were forbidden to eat eggs, lard, or dairy products such as milk and butter. According to some sources, the three loops in a pretzel may symbolize trinity or a hugging embracing arm.

But are pretzels a balanced food (healthy)?

We did not know about our Amish friends’ pretzel recipes or nutritional facts but we found some generic pretzel nutritional facts online, shown here.

In my new book, The Right Way to Eat, I explain the significance of each of these components and the rules of thumb to follow to make sure our food is metabolically balanced. So let’s start our Food 101 analysis:

1. For starters, the bulk of the food, as expected is carbohydrates (the wheat flour used to make the dough), about 65 out of the 125 grams serving size. Bread type flour usually has around 12% gluten (protein) which turns out to be 12%*65 grams= 8 grams which is exactly what you see in the chart for the amount of protein. That means all the protein came from the gluten in the flour (as compared to the pepperoni pretzel which has 8 additional grams from the meat protein). In my book, I share my view and research about Gluten, which is beyond the scope of this article.

2. There is 5 grams of fat in a serving size of 125 grams. This could be in the dough conditioner or the oil brushed onto the pretzel before being served. Most likely, the fat used is from cheaper sources like seed oils and not the more expensive form (butter). Seed oils can cause metabolic disruptions in our body.

3. Fiber: It is unclear here if the amount shown is soluble, insoluble or total fiber. Because we only see 2 grams (out of the 65 grams of dry flour used) as fiber (about 3%), we know this is most likely refined (denatured, with the bran removed) flour and not the more natural “whole grain” flour because whole wheat flour contains 10-12% in fiber while refined (bran removed, then pulverized) only contains 2-3%. Insoluble and soluble fibers have different but important roles in our digestive and metabolic health, which I explain in detail in my book. Most of the fiber remaining in refined flour is of the soluble type. I assign a “denaturation” score to different forms of food in my book. According to my method, refined bleached flour is seriously denatured and is deficient in fiber and other nutrients removed with the brain, including many of the vitamins and phytonutrients essential for the metabolism of the grain (germ).

4. We see 8 grams of added sugar and about a gram of added sodium salt here. Pure sugar and salt are denatured foods which are added to most processed food as a preservative, flavor enhancer or cheap filler. The cinnamon sugar pretzel is even more denatured with respect to added sugar.

5. Water: When we add the amount of protein, fat, carbs and added sugar we have 87 grams of nutrients, so we assume the remainder of the serving size of 125 grams, or about 38 grams is consisted of water or other undisclosed additives.

Generally speaking, as in most processed food, we are here dealing with a high sodium, high sugar, low fiber product probably using lower quality seed oils. If you compare the pretzel to a similar-sized apple, the ratio of water and fiber to carbs are a lot higher, and sodium and fat a lot lower, in the naturally created apple. In The Right Way to Eat, I explain simple rules of thumb to follow to eat healthy.