Finding bread in a regular grocery store that doesn’t have honey or high fructose corn syrup in it can be a pain. Pretty much every vegan has wandered the bread aisle, frustrated at how difficult it is to find bread that doesn’t have a load of extra junk added to it. I’ve noticed a positive trend recently, though: it’s getting easier thanks to Ezekiel 4:9 bread.

For years, I’d seen Ezekiel bread in the freezer at the health food store, but never bothered to give it a second glance. Now, not only is the bread available in many regular old supermarkets, but so are english muffins, bagels, and even pasta and cereal. I finally gave it a shot recently and you know what? The stuff’s good.

What’s interesting is that the bread’s ingredients are based on a biblical verse:

Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, [according] to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.

Interestingly, when you combine these things, you get (according to Food for Life):

A complete protein is created that closely parallels the protein found in milk and eggs. In fact, the protein quality is so high, that it is 84.3% as efficient as the highest recognized source of protein, containing all 9 essential amino acids. There are 18 amino acids present in this unique bread – from all vegetable sources – naturally balanced in nature.

It doesn’t matter much to me where the idea came from, but I am glad that it’s getting so much easier to find a simple, healthy, vegan bread.

I’m also glad that Food for Life decided to bake bread following Ezekiel 4:9 and not one of the other nearby verses (and, in advance, I’m not making these up):

4:10 And thy meat which thou shalt eat [shall be] by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.

…

4:12 And thou shalt eat it [as] barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

…

4:15 Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.

It should be noted that there are slightly more palatable translations, but still… that’s a lot of dung talk!

[Edited to correct spelling of "Ezekiel."]