THE STAFF OF DEATH - White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf - page 48

of nutrient absorption—but it made intuitive sense to many people and became something of an early
twentieth-century health axiom. Nevertheless, by the mid-1920s, a growing field of food gurus and di-
etary advisors had begun to sow serious doubts among ordinary consumers about the damaging effects
of industrial white bread.
THE QUICKER YOU'RE DEAD
By the mid-1920s, despite Dr. Hutchinson's efforts, anti-white bread forces were gaining ground rapidly.
As one columnist observed incredulously, the “man in the leopard suit” (MacFadden) was “hoodwink-
ing” audiences across the country. And to MacFadden's voice a chorus joined: Delle Ross, a well-known
dietician, wrote in the New York Telegram that “white bread kills more than any other food,” and Eva
Osgood of the League of Women Voters warned mothers that “giving [too much] white bread to chil-
dren will cause blindness before they are six.” Charles Froude's Right Food proclaimed white bread the
wrong food, responsible for “morbidity of mind and body.” And an editorial in the Chicago Journal of
Commerce observed that “wide open expressionless eyes, a pinched nose and contracted jaws [are typ-
ical characteristics of the] woman who has been disfigured by the use of white flour.” 57
These were not a few fringe comments. In 1927, Louis Rumsey at the American Institute of Baking
assembled a nearly topic-length compendium of accusations against white bread. 58 Critics pinpointed
white bread as the source of, among other ailments, anemia, cancer, diabetes, criminal delinquency,
tuberculosis, polyneuritis, neurasthenia, gout, rheumatism, liver disease, kidney failure, overstimulated
nervous systems and, of course, acidosis. Constipation, an obvious example, rarely made the list, al-
though one “Mr. Sibley,” writing for a Chicago newspaper, denounced white bread as a feminine plot
“to choke the intestines of men with starch paste.” In the golden age of the radio jingle, great slogans
caught the ear: white bread was “corpse-white,” “the broken staff,” “grain minus life,” and “the food
that doesn't feed.” Most famously, Dr. P. L. Clark, a Chicago radio personality, gave us a ditty still re-
peated today: “The whiter your bread, the quicker you're dead.” 59
As always, it's hard to gauge the impact of this onslaught on everyday consumer decisions, but by
1929, Philip Lovell could observe, “Fifteen years ago it was only the 'freak' or the health 'nut' who
would go into the bakeshop … and ask for whole wheat or rye bread. … The darker flours were known
only to the foreigners who had been accustomed to them from their mother country. True Americans
used only white flour. Today—what a change! Every up-to-date restaurant or cafeteria carries two or
three different kinds of whole wheat breads. … A visit to any downtown cafeteria will also show that at
least four out of five of its patrons choose the dark flours for their breadstuffs.” 60 Lovell's enthusiasm
doesn't quite synch with data on bakery production—whole wheat and rye bread accounted for less than
20 percent of the nation's output during this period. 61 But even accounting for exaggeration, something
was changing. At least enough to send bakers into a defensive frenzy.
THE GOSPEL OF MODERATION
During the 1920s and 1930s, a few industrial bakers embraced the new demand for darker breads, trying,
usually unsuccessfully, to mass-produce and mass-market whole wheat loaves. Most simply refused to
change, resisting attacks on their product with all their might. Trade organizations churned out pamph-
lets and posters countering “food quackery,” distributed guides to the nutritional benefits of white bread,
and funded research into the same. The American Institute of Baking even offered biting cartoons lam-
pooning “food fakirs and faddists” free to any publication that would run them. 62
In 1930, capitalizing on the government's desire to help farmers by promoting wheat consumption,
industry representatives and the National Food Board pressured the USDA to make a definitive state-