Review: Ultra-rare, Dr. Sebi-approved, two-ingredient, store-bought snack -- Wasa Light RYe Crispbread
By The Treasure-Sharer
My man pretty much cured me when my large intestine was literally hanging out of my anus (also known as a rectal prolapse), and got me to stop being anorexic when literally nothing and no-one else could, so when he recommended Dr. Sebi as a person I look into when I was trying to find health information online to help maintain and further improve my body he had helped heal, I took my man very seriously, and watched all the YouTube videos I could find of Dr. Sebi's interviews, lectures, talks, and teachings, and went all-in on only eating foods approved in Dr. Sebi's nutritional guide.
Like Dr. Sebi, my man didn't go to school to study nutrition, but his self-study has made him knowledgeable and capable enough to heal people like me, and I could believe Dr. Sebi's teachings, like my man's, due to the solid logic, research, and results backing both him and my man.
"Dr. Sebi," the moniker given to Alfredo Bowman by the people he had healed, after he was healed of multiple afflictions by a Mexican herbalist's prescribed treatment regimen and diet -- and then shared the health knowledge he continued to acquire afterward, as well as his healing practices, teachings, and products, to help heal people of sometimes lifetime and terminal illnesses -- was only one of several people my man directed me to look into, back when I was feeling overwhelmed by the multitude of health information on the internet, not knowing what to go with.
I had adopted a ridiculously poor diet for a time, where I had gone completely 180 from regularly eating healthy foods and allowing myself to eat only one "bad" food choice a day, to choosing to eat almost nothing but junk food, and only maybe one or two "good" choices (what I thought of as "good" at the time) like an apple and chicken breasts, to maintain my protein levels every day, in order to take advantage of the sweets and junk food I had bought at severely discounted prices after the Christmas holidays. I basically decided to forego the healthier foods I normally ate to make room for the bad foods I wanted to eat, in a bid to try to maintain my weight while eating nothing but literally-junk food.
I had a wake-up call when my rectum started bulging out of my anus due to my weakened tissues, and I also got lab tests done that showed extreme nutrient deficiencies, as a result, at an age when no one should have been experiencing such extreme symptoms as those, which my man helped me fix through the other things and sources he recommended me to try, that helped me gain back the weight I had lost, and fix my extreme nutrient imbalances.
I had been looking to maintain and continue to improve my health, but there was too much complicated and conflicting information that made me unsure of what was correct and incorrect, so when my man showed me a video of how Sebi divided foods into natural and unnatural, and I watched a lot of his other videos afterward that explained the guidelines and how Dr. Sebi had arrived at the foods he had included in his guidelines, I went all in and dropped all non-approved foods, since I'm extreme like that. :P
My man had been burned by the medical system numerous times during his childhood and youth, even having been made bedridden and incapacitated for three months by a vaccine, after being forced to take one in a standard school shot.
He first started looking into Dr. Sebi after discovering him after reading a book by Kevin Trudeau, called Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, where the author said that there are things out there that CAN heal you naturally, but didn't mention sources or solutions, which led my man to become obsessed with finding the solutions and sources. Prior to reading Kevin Trudeau's book, my man had read a biography on Michael Jackson that had mentioned Michael's acne being cured, and when my man saw that Dr. Sebi mentioned that he had healed Michael Jackson, he thought back to what he had read in the biography and realized that Dr. Sebi had been the one to cure his acne, just like when Dr. Sebi mentioned that he had healed Magic Johnson of AIDS, and my man remembered how Magic had been feared pretty much guaranteed dead after his initial diagnosis, but was able to survive and get better, thanks to Sebi's healing.
As a testament to how much "they" don't want you to know about Dr. Sebi and his teachings, it has now become incredibly difficult to find the videos of the Dr. Sebi interviews and lectures I watched in the past, as most have been taken down or hidden from YouTube, probably to suppress people's ability to hear what he had to say, unfiltered, for themselves, as they go against the popular narrative of certain diseases being incurable, and about which foods can be considered "healthy." My man had been warning me as early as 2015 that this censorship would take place, and how, in the timeframe I was looking into it, there was an urgency to find as much as I could about it, before it was taken down and made no longer available and accessible.
As a result of this suppression of once abundantly available information, I am having to share some of my knowledge of what I learned about Dr. Sebi and his teachings from memory, as I have been unable to find exact sources for some of the information I am sharing about Dr. Sebi -- so I apologize in advance if I make any mistakes in my recollections. I'm just try to sum up what I know about Sebi and his food guide to help you better understand the value of the product I am reviewing, if you don't already know anything about Dr. Sebi.
In the 1980s, Dr. Sebi was arrested for practicing medicine without a licence, and claiming to cure AIDS and other diseases, and won his case, where he represented himself to the judge, and where 77 of the people he had cured using food as medicine appeared at his trial to testify on his behalf, and showed doctors' reports proving that they had their afflictions prior to seeing Sebi, and then no longer had them after being treated by Dr. Sebi's remedies -- their afflictions including diabetes, AIDS, sickle cell anemia, cancer, and more.
You can see an interview of the late Dr. Sebi on "The Rock Newman Show" in the link that follows, where you can go specifically to 16:13-25:58 to hear him discussing his arrest, the charges against him, his trial, and how he defended himself in his trial and won: https://rumble.com/v52w8ek-dr.-sebi-talks-about-his-supreme-court-case-with-rock-newman-full-hd.html
My man and I have always preferred to go the natural route for medicine, and prefer food over pharma always, so Dr. Sebi's food guide is one we try to follow when we can, as it consists of foods specifically tested by Sebi (who, from my recollection, previously worked as a chemical engineer, and used his background and knowledge to test different kinds and varieties of foods, such as testing their pH to determine if they were acid or alkaline [which you can watch this video to learn a bit more about], and listed the foods he found to be natural through his testing [as opposed to unnatural, manmade hybrids, which contain harmful substances needed to bind the unnatural combinations together] in his guide).
You can see a copy of the nutritional guide here: https://allnaturellhealing.com/products/dr-sebi-nutrition-guide-free-download. I'd post an image of it directly, but don't want to risk issues with copyright.
As you can see, the list is very short, and can be very difficult to stick to and get used to, due to the very limited number of foods that are allowed, which consist mostly of select fruits and vegetables, ancient grains, nuts, seeds, oils, herbs, and spices (with no meat or dairy allowed).
If you weren't a cook before, you pretty much have to learn how to cook virtually all your own meals and prepare your own snacks -- and even the ingredients to make your meals and snacks (including non-dairy milks, cheeses, sweeteners, sauces, dressings, and more) -- to be able to comply with the list, which goes as specific as listing that only baby and burro bananas can be used (as opposed to regular bananas, which are clones), and that sesame seeds, coconut oil and other coconut products, and olive oil can only be eaten raw, as cooking them alters ther chemical nature.
It can be truly maddening to search the shelves for ready-made snacks and meals, because it is a true challenge to find ones that DON'T contain foods that aren't on the list. For example, I considered it a major score to find a glass jar of olives preserved in salt and water, as all the other jars I had come across prior to it had some kind of acid or unnatural preservative or spices in it.
Back when I first started the diet and stuck to eating and using just the listed foods, I scoured the stores looking for foods made with only approved ingredients, and Wasa light rye crispbread, and Ryvita dark rye crispbread, were the ONLY products that consisted of more than one ingredient that I found at the big chain grocery stores my parents frequented that made the cut. (I did my searching a few years back though, so please cut me some slack if new items have appeared in the meantime, or slipped my radar at the time). Ryvita light rye crispbread also would have fit the bill, but was not available in the stores in my area.
According to the ingredient list, the light rye variety in particular is made with just wholegrain rye flour and salt. Every other variety of Wasa products, other varieties of Ryvita, and competing brands like Finn Crisp, contain yeast, seeds, spices, and other ingredients that aren't on the approved list -- that's how rare it was, and still is, to find even one Dr. Sebi-approved food product that you can buy, ready-made.
My family started out buying both varieties, but the Wasa crispbreads were a dollar cheaper a bag than the Ryvita crispbreads, when you bought two when they went on sale, and also often had in-store coupons we could use for further discounts. Ultimately, because of the cheaper pricing, we just stopped buying Ryvita crispbreads completely, and focused on loading up on Wasa crispbreads, because that was just smarter for us, cost-wise. The advantages of the Ryvita dark rye crispbread were that it came with packaging that had a sealing mechanism that stored the product better, and the crispbread also had a stronger taste, that could be viewed as a plus to people who like the taste of rye.
Anyway, since I'm most familiar with Wasa light rye crispbreads, that's what I've decided to review. You can try the Ryvita ones too, if you want to compare, but I haven't had one in years, so I don't think it's fair for me to review those. I do recall that they were smaller in size than the Wasa crispbreads, and had more calories per crispbread.
Ingredient-wise and cost-wise, I think that Wasa's light rye variety is gold for Dr. Sebi followers, and for people who like to eat as naturally as possible. While this particular crispbread variety doesn't claim to be organic, Wasa does state that "Wasa Crispbread Light Rye Is Made With Non-GMO, All Natural Whole Grains."
In my mind, they probably still are better for you than the great majority of the packaged items available in most grocery stores, and that's why my family stocks up on these every time they go on sale, and why I have two every day, meal-prepped into my week as a black sesame paste sandwich snack. See below for an example of what one of my sesame paste sandwiches looks like.
This has become my man's go-to snack when he's still hungry after a light meal, topped with peanut butter and banana slices, or avocado, tomato, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and olive oil when he has time, and plain when he doesn't. He also likes it with hummus, and, while not approved, also with dill, cream cheese, and smoked salmon.
While they're relatively plain, this can be a positive, as you can spice them up with toppings and spreads, without the crispbread interfering with the taste, most of the time. I can actually enjoy them plain now, but I think they taste super-good as a sandwich with one tablespoon of unrefined organic coconut oil in between two slices, or a tablespoon of avocado oil or extra-virgin olive oil. As I mentioned earlier, I also eat them with homemade black sesame paste every day (except for on fasting days) as a snack, which I make by mixing ground black sesame seeds with extra virgin olive oil. I've also had it with other versions of my paste, that taste equally delicious.
I've actually been referring to Wasa crispbreads as crackers until now, because their texture made them a cracker in my head, and I only through researching for this review realized that they are not crackers (I just thought of them as Scandanavian crackers). Wasa's crispbreads are made in Sweden and Germany.
It appears that the light rye variety is the most traditional recipe, as Wikipedia says that crispbread is a flat and dry type of bread, traditionally consisting of wholemeal rye flour, salt, and water, that is lightweight and keeps fresh for a very long time due to its lack of water -- but that many kinds of crispbread today contain wheat flour, spices and grains, and are often leavened with yeast or sourdough, with milk or sesame seeds sometimes added.
If you're wondering about the bubbles in the crackers, Wikipedia explains how bubbles are introduced into the dough mechanically in unleavened crispbread -- traditionally done by mixing powdered ice or snow into the dough, which then evaporated during baking. It explains how this is achieved today by cooling the dough (which must contain a large amount of water), and mixing it until bubbly; or by kneading the dough under pressure in an extruder, with the water evaporating due to the sudden drop in pressure, which creates bubbles in the dough. See below for some pictures of the top of the crackers and the bubbles on top.
The Wasa website FAQ says that Wasa has been baking crispbread in Sweden since 1919, and has now spread it to over 40 countries worldwide. They state how crispbread dates back to medieval times, when it was baked to preserve the crop over the long and cold winters in Sweden and Finland, and how the name "Wasa" was picked to create an easily recognizable brand for all Swedes, as it is associated with the name of the Swedish king, Gustav Vasa.
After opening a new bag and counting how many crispbreads there were, I've discovered that there are 33 crispbreads in one bag -- which you can count, yourself, below.
WARNINGS
I've been eating these regularly for years now, and have experienced some issues you should watch for when it comes to packaging.
Sliced packaging (store's fault)
I've had packages several times now where the paper has been sliced, so that a line appears through the bag. I think it's actually a problem caused by the store, rather than the manufacturer, as it's likely they were using a box cutter to open a box full of bags of Wasa crispbread to stock shelves with, but inadvertently sliced the ones sitting at the top of the box. I have gotten refunds from the store, or coupons from the manufacturer, each time I have discovered bags that have been sliced like this. If you still have the receipt, and it's still within the refundable timeframe, you can probably go to the store and return or exchange a damaged bag of crispbreads for a new one. If you've lost the receipt or have had your bag stored for a while and only discovered a defective bag much later, you can contact the company, where you will be asked to send photos of the bag, give the number on the bag that indicates the lot number it came from, tell them what store location you bought it from, etc., after which you will be sent a coupon in the mail to get a new bag for free, to replace the damaged one.
See below to see what to look out for when choosing a bag to buy at the store. I know my man's family has encountered this problem too, so it really is worth inspecting each bag you buy to try to avoid packages that might have been cut like this. We just ended up throwing bags like this out, rather than risk consuming the germs that might have contaminated the crackers inside.
Weevil infestations
Something a lot more disturbing to watch out for, that I have only encountered once, is opening the bag and finding it infested with weevils (small insects). Wasa acknowledged to me that its factories can sometimes experience contamination when I contacted them about it.
I recommend always inspecting your bag of crispbread before eating. Because I meal-prep black sesame paste crispbreads every week, I wasn't paying attention, and just pulling crispbreads out, and had already put my paste on many of the crispbreads before I noticed the weevils at the bottom of my bag. :O See below for how they looked like.
It was absolutely disgusting, and, when I looked it up online, I saw that it's happened to a few other customers before. When I contacted the company, they told me that that can sometimes happen, and asked me to send pictures and videos of the bag, and other information. The representative told me that he would be sending me lots of coupons for free bags, leading me to believe that I would get a lot, but I only got sent two, each exchangeable for a free bag of Wasa crispbreads. I was a bit miffed, as the sesame paste I had put on the contaminated crispbreads was worth more than that, since it was organic, and also used oil, and I had to throw it all away.
I've continued buying Wasa light rye crispbreads since then, and never experienced that again though, so just pay attention before using the crackers, and I think you'll be fine, if not disgusted, if you ever encounter what I did.
The crispbreads are crispy when you open the bag, and can stay crispy even after more than a week, if you close the bag properly. It would be nice if it came with the ability to seal the bag somehow, but the packaging is made with paper, and not plastic, which is nice, since I prefer to stay away from plastic, when i can. I just use rubber bands to keep the part I ripped open closed. My man puts the bag in an airtight container after opening it.
My man snacks on the crispbreads plain when there's nothing else to eat. There are only 80 calories in three crispbreads, so you probably won't get fat eating them, unless you load them with unhealthy toppings. This serving gives 6g of fibre, and 2g of protein. See the photo to the side for the nutritional information.
I like that they are cheaper than the other brands of these kinds of crackers when they go on sale, and often have coupons to make them even cheaper. That's how we try to buy them at my household, and stock up when it goes on sale AND has a coupon.
They're so plain that even my health-conscious dad, who is very picky about what he eats and what he doesn't find too sweet, can eat them. See below for how they look like plain and untopped, on the bottom.
Like other Sebi-approved grains, rye is an ancient grain, that is more nutrient-rich and better tolerated by the body than modern, genetically modified and processed grains. An article on 7 Awesome Health Benefits of Rye: The World's Healthiest Grain lists helping with weight loss, helping prevent gall stones, being better for diabetics, being great for the digestive system, being heart-healthy, helping prevent cancer, and protecting against childhood asthma as some of the benefits of consuming this ancient, Sebi-approved grain.
Review:
Pros:
-only two (Sebi-approved) ingredients
-non-GMO
-packaged in paper
-only 80 calories in three crispbreads, for very light snacks or sandwiches
-mild taste does not overpower most toppings placed on it
-good, crispy texture
-long shelf-life
-relatively filling, despite the low calorie count
-made from ancient whole grain (rye), which has many nutritional benefits
Cons:
-not amazing-tasting -- very plain and might not taste awesome, and may take some getting used to at the beginning, but when your tastebuds acclimitize, they can even taste good eaten plain
-can get stale-tasting if you don't store them properly, and allow them to be exposed to air
-not organic
-packaging can be damaged by stores, when box cutters slit through the box and through some bags, which leaves the crackers open to exposure to germs (but can get refund, exchange, or coupons if you bring the bag back to the store, or contact the manufacturer)
-may (very rarely) come infested with weevils. This has only happened to me once, and I was sent two coupons from the manufacturer after contacting them and sending them pictures and videos of, and information about, the infested bag.
Gem or Junk?
For us:
Gem (4 stars out of 5)
With how difficult it is to find premade, healthy, Sebi-approved foods, it's great that at least Wasa light rye crispbreads exist as a quick, ready-to-buy-and-eat snack. With their mild flavour, they're very versatile, and can be topped with many different things, or eaten alone. They can last for more than a year (and probably a lot longer than that!) unopened, and for a long time after opening, if you store them in a way that keeps air from getting to them to make them go stale. This variety of crackers is readily available in most grocery stores and online. The company's customer service is good about replacing damaged or defective bags. Their minimal and natural ingredients, paper packaging, and affordable price (especially when bought on sale and with coupons) are some other highlights that make these crackers a gem in our book. While they are non-organic, I find myself using other non-organic Sebi-approved foods too, due to limited availability of products and ingredients, and price considerations, so that's not going to keep me from eating these. The fact that the crispbreads are not organic and might taste boring initially, and that I found weevils in a bag once are why I took away a star.
Gems For Who:
1) Sebi-ists, and people who follow the Dr. Sebi diet and are looking for Sebi-approved food they can buy ready made to eat
2) people who want food with minimal ingredients, looking for two-ingredient, store-bought, packaged food
3) people who prefer their food to not be packaged in plastic
4) people on a diet, or who want a low-calorie snack
5) people who want to avoid wheat, and eat ancient grains that are better for you and your digestion
6) people who want a low-calorie sandwich-making option
7) people who like plain-tasting foods
8) people who want a healthy go-to snack, to avoid unhealhier snackables
9) people who are okay with non-organic, but otherwise natural products (made with natural ingredients)
10) people who are on a low-budget, but who want to eat as close to the approved Sebi food guide as they can
11) people who want a sugar-free, low-fat snack
Conclusion
Wasa light rye crispbreads are a great transition food for those who want to try following the Dr. Sebi nutritional guide, but are overwhelmed by the prospect of not finding any packaged items available to buy to make eating natural and alkaline easier.
I have literally nothing to gain from sharing this find, since I don't have any affiliate links or anything you can click for me to make anything from, so I'm literally just sharing it so that you too can have an easier time eating healthy, if you choose to try these very versatile crispbreads.
You can follow the advice I have included above to hopefully minimize the potential of you selecting wonky bags, or at least give you guidance on what to do if you do encounter them.
We may in the future offer paid content that goes into more detail about how and what we eat to stay healthy, and what we do to stay alkaline on a budget, if enough gem fans show interest.
In the meantime, see you in my next article!
