HOW WHITE BREAD BECAME WHITE TRASH - White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf - page 87

der bread prints, text from the French existentialist Albert Camus followed the iconic words “Enriched
Bread Wonder” like an ingredient list: “Great ideas,” it read, “come into the world as gently as doves.
Perhaps if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a first flutter of
wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope. Helps Build a Body Twelve Ways.” 7
In the years that followed, the country saw much uproar of empires and nations—race riots, mechan-
ized slaughter in Vietnam, assassinations, and toxic spills—but also the birth of new social movements,
civil rights, feminism, environmentalism, farm workers' rights: the gentle, and not so gentle, stirrings
of life and hope. Amidst all that roar and counter-roar, however, it was increasingly difficult, if not im-
possible, to associate industrial bread with anything living or hopeful—even as a subversive jest. Store-
bought white bread combined the two most hated motifs of the era: industrial origins and whiteness. As
food historian Warren Belasco wrote, “For Theodore Roszak, who popularized the word 'countercul-
ture' in his 1969 bestseller, white bread was a perfect metaphor for the regime of experts and technocrats
who, for the sake of efficiency and order, threatened to rob us of all effort, thought, and independen-
ce.” “Only in Amerika could people want their food bleached … all bleached to match the bleached-out
mentality of white supremacy,” another counterculture writer proclaimed. 8 Good food was rustic, unre-
fined, and brown, ideally with roots in peasant society. “Don't eat white; eat right,” the saying went, and
Dr. Clark's 1920s-era ditty, “The whiter your bread, the quicker you're dead,” experienced a dramatic
revival.
The counterculture—itself a diverse collection of movements, philosophies, impulses, and
ideals—strained against the homogeneous, the artificial, and the mechanical in myriad ways. Factions
and subgroups often spent more time denouncing each other's shortcomings than they did fighting the
Man, but they could all agree about one thing: white bread. It was, for the counterculture, an instruct-
ive commodity—a familiar, accessible way to comprehend any of the binaries that gave shape to the
movement and animated revolt: authentic vs. artificial, natural vs. chemical, brown vs. white, healthy
vs. poisonous, real vs. plastic, peaceful vs. militaristic. As a 1973 essay in the Minnesota countercul-
ture magazine North Country Alternatives explained, “Bread is a good focal point because its story,
from grain grown on giant factory farms to technologically-produced Wonder Bread, is a very clear il-
lustration of where power lies, and how it is used against us.” 9 The sterile, chemically laced, and ho-
mogeneous substance of white bread could stand in as a synecdoche for social conformism, the envir-
onmental costs of industrialism, racism, bland suburbia, or cultural imperialism abroad. Establishment
archenemies such as Robert McNamara or Earl Butz weren't like white bread, they were white bread. 10
This political allegory had deep roots in American culture, and 1960s counterculture drew heavily
on earlier food reform movements. Rumblings of the countercultural revolt against white bread could
even be felt during the 1950s golden age of industrial eating. Most consumers happily ate six slices of
industrial white bread a day during the 1950s, but sporadic and short-lived waves of anxiety were not
uncommon. During those outbursts, fanned by popular radio health advisors like Carleton Fredricks, the
FDA or USDA received thousands of letters decrying “unnatural” chemical additives in bread. 11 Con-
gress responded through the 1950s with hearings on the makeup of industrial bread and the safety of
chemical emulsifiers, dough conditioners, softeners, and other additives. In 1951, for example, Congress
gathered seventeen thousand pages of testimony on the bread question and headlines across the country
asked, “Are We Eating Poisoned Bread?” 12
Nevertheless, 1950s-era concerns about bread were different from those that would emerge later. In
the 1950s, consumers and officials expressed their dismay at the state of bread in a language of public
health, corrupt baking trusts, and adulteration that would have been immediately familiar to any food re-
former of the Progressive Era. “Change the national food habits and we can still [have] a virile nation,”