White Bread: A Social History Of The Store-Bought Loaf (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
Bobrow-Strain delivers an engrossing, truly social history of white bread. The author raises some big questions: What is the relationship between white bread and class? Where do diet and privilege intersect? How can such a banal food product represent so many contradictions? How can white bread's reputation oscillate so wildly? The author examines the history of industrialized baking and the parabolic trajectory of packaged white bread, using advertisements, the commentary of nutritionists and journalists, and company and government documents. I had never before thought about the role of white bread in war. It's compelling and thoroughly researched. A+ It was OK, I could basically sum up the book with one run-on sentence. Bread has been a staple of humankind almost since cooking with fire began and became a chore of woman the world over but the process became seen as dirty and unhealthful so that gave rise in the late 1800's into the early 1900's of industrial baking which in order to boost profits invented auto slicing, the plastic wrapper and big soft uniform loaves filled with chemicals.There are some juicy details within such as why vitamins were introduced into bread (WW2)and why the whiteness of bread was seen as more American and cleaner (healthier) than dark bread (too ethnic). White bread then proceeded to become the antithesis of the ideal and was seen as a poor persons diet. Quite a shift that is still pervasive today. Overall, this could have been a thesis paper rather than a full length book.
What do You think about White Bread: A Social History Of The Store-Bought Loaf (2012)?
maybe a bit too much detail but a very interesting social/economic history of the iconic loaf.
—Cado
Interesting material, but the prose is wordy and left me feeling I was slogging through sand.
—selina
Eh. Read like a Masters level thesis. Repetitive in many places. Just okay.
—Snootybeast
