Just an aside: countertop bread machines are amazing these days. You can control the ingredients (i.e. eliminate preservatives) and have wildly inexpensive, fresh bread since you can buy breadflour in bulk (e.g. 50-lb bags).
I was confused too, but it's going to depend on "How" processed it is. If the flour still has all the bran, germ, and fiber. I would say it's not very processed (Minimally processed). If it's bleached, I would say that treading in Ultra-Processed Foods territory.
Unprocessed or minimally processed foods: Think vegetables, grains, legumes, fruits, nuts, meats, seafood, herbs, spices, garlic, eggs and milk.
Processed foods: When ingredients such as oil, sugar or salt are added to foods and they are packaged, the result is processed foods. Examples are simple bread, cheese, tofu, and canned tuna or beans. These foods have been altered, but not in a way that’s detrimental to health.
Ultra-processed foods: These foods go through multiple processes (extrusion, molding, milling, etc.), contain many added ingredients and are highly manipulated. Examples are soft drinks, chips, chocolate, candy, ice-cream, sweetened breakfast cereals, packaged soups, chicken nuggets, hotdogs, fries and more.
what do you mean by highly processed flour? whole wheat is not treated or anything, just dehusked if i remember and then ground down. is there something else they do to whole wheat flour these days?
'Then ground down' is a much bigger statement then you may think. If we look at the particle size of flour via historic grinding processes what did it look like? I'm sure they were far less uniform and in general larger than what we have now, which should lead to differences in the glycemic index.
CICO would have you believe there is no difference in 100 calories of coke and 100 calories of raw spinach, but the coke is going to have nearly instant uptake and the spinach will take hours to digest.
