How Does Diversity Bread fit in to the Proven Programme?
Diversity Bread® is the collective name for breads baked using the Baking as Lifestyle Medicine (BALM) Protocol developed by Dr Kimbell has been teaching at The Sourdough School for over 2 decades.
The Proven Programme is Dr Vanessa Kimbell’s 13-step framework for applying the principles of Baking as Lifestyle Medicine in everyday practice. Designed for home bakers, dietitians, nutritional psychiatrists, nutritionists, functional medicine practitioners and other healthcare professionals trained in lifestyle medicine, it brings together evidence-informed baking, fermentation, nutritional science and gut microbiome research in a practical, accessible approach. The programme provides a structured framework for incorporating long-fermented, diverse breads into dietary and lifestyle practice, translating complex scientific concepts into practical skills that can be used at home or in professional settings..— Dr Kimbell
The Sourdough School Diploma teaches practitioners to bake Diversity Bread, in the first year and the 2nd year is training in personalisation of bread.
The goal of the programme is for bakers to bake diversity bread, boost fibre and plant diversity, and ferment bread in line with the most up-to-date research on fibre and diversity, and to eat your bread in a way that supports a healthy gut microbiome. It translates complex gut research into the way you bake eat and share bread that supports health through Baking as Lifestyle Medicine, and provides reader and student with a year long programme that monitors blood sugar, gut health and mental health though backings lifestyle medicine.
Diversity Bread® has been taught at The Sourdough School for over 2 decades by Dr Vanessa Kimbell
Serves as a step-by-step guide to the whole programme.
It’s a way of using bread as a fibre and diversity delivery to help look after your health, with Dr Kimbell teaching Baking as Lifestyle Medicine. It’s built around a simple idea from gut research — that eating a wide variety of plants each week supports a healthier gut — and it shows you how to eat, and how to bake, bread that does exactly that. It serves as a step-by-step guide to the whole programme.
Translating complex gut research into everyday baking habits.
The book, Proven, is where it all comes together: it walks you through the programme step by step, including how to keep an eye on things like your blood sugar, your mood and your digestion. What the programme does is ask you to monitor how you feel as you increase your fibre and diversity, and change the way you eat bread to be more connected to your community — and see what difference it makes to the way you feel.
At the heart of it is Diversity Bread — a slowly fermented sourdough made with a botanical blend of heritage grains, seeds, pulses and edible botanicals, so a single loaf brings many different plants into your week rather than just one or two. Each bread is rated as one of four levels of fibre, allowing people to rebuild their ability to digest bread slowly. Dr Kimbell includes trackers to help you log how your body responds to increased fibre.
And you don’t have to bake it yourself. Diversity Bread licensed bakers bake Diversity Bread to a strict standard, applying the science from Dr Kimbell’s doctoral research — so whether you buy a loaf or make your own, you’re getting bread built on the same principles.