Sales of brown bread in the UK have risen, while sales of white bread have fallen for the fist time.

Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket, said this was the first time that white bread - whose sales growth had always steadily tracked population increases - had ever seen a sales fall, reported The Daily Telegraph.

According to Kantar Worldpanel, which monitors sales at all the leading retail outlets, white bread sales fell by 1 per cent in 2010, while sales of brown bread increased by six per cent, with seeded bread products increasing by 9 per cent.

The figures suggest a distinct shift in consumers' diets towards more healthy products after years of nutritionists and health experts telling people to favour brown over white bread. It also signals a possible end to what was one of Britain's most staple food products: the sliced white loaf, which had been part of Britain's diet long before the Chorleywood baking method was developed in 1961, allowing industrialised bakers to drastically cut the time to bake a loaf.

For much of the last two centuries brown bread has been considered an inferior product, eaten only by those that could not afford white bread.