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bread enrichment program has done much to increase consumption.” “Through vigorous advertising,” it
continued, “the American public has been led to a new conception of the healthful qualities of commer-
cially baked bread.” 36
But this wasn't just about selling bread. Defense planners believed that the enrichment campaign
would engender a broader consumer consciousness around nutrition and defense—and it did. As one
study reported, “the flood of publicity on enrichment helped make the public 'vitamin conscious,' ” and
facilitated the efforts of other food industries working to connect their products with national defense.
According to another source, white bread enrichment had “started a trend in food advertising and nutri-
tion education that cannot fail to educate the American public to the value of truly 'protective' foods.”
As the influential nutritionist Hazel K. Stiebeling reflected after the war, bread enrichment campaigns
trained Americans to take vitamins seriously. Indeed, this effort worked so well that government offi-
cials and bread advertising frequently had to remind consumers that enriched bread was not a medicine
or miracle. 37
The speed with which this message spread stunned even its most ardent supporters. Well before V-J
Day, public health officials and war foods planners had a sense that they had achieved something re-
markable and long lasting. Patting themselves on the back, they called bread enrichment “one of the
most valuable and successful activities” of modern civil defense and the “beginning [of] a new era in
nutrition for the American people.” Bread enrichment, Thomas C.
Desmond declared euphorically in the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Nutrition's
landmark 1944 report, Food in War and in Peace , had been “the key to the final solution of this Nation's
nutrition problem.” Should this achievement be carried into the postwar period, he predicted, bread “will
compete with milk for the title of 'The perfect food.' ” 38
Desmond was right. The habit of associating enriched bread with strength carried over into the post-
war period, even as former GIs moved to the suburbs en masse. And that association breathed new life
into industrial bread. Celebrating enriched bread's tenth anniversary in 1951, the Journal of Home Eco-
nomics marveled at how completely enrichment's success had silenced skeptics and “food faddists.” A
Colliers article written around the same time beamed, “On the tenth anniversary of enriched bread, many
medical experts say that the accomplishment is one of the greatest nutritional advances in history.” The
American Medical Association, the National Research Council, and scores of local newspapers pub-
lished glowing commendations, praising the bread enrichment campaign for making the United States
stronger and healthier. Robert R. Williams, for his part, coined the widely circulated sound bite, “En-
riched white bread is bargain health insurance for millions.” A product of mobilization for world war,
the association between industrial bread and security would continue into the Cold War. 39
ROCKFORD FILES
After World War II, Rockford, Illinois, an industrial center built by European immigrants, daring in-
ventors, and strong labor unions, was the stuff of middle-class dreams. Although Rockford's economy
was far more industrial than the national average, it suited America's self-image to think of it as the
country's most “typical” city, and sociologists obliged with the label. In 1949, Life shared sociologists'
discovery with the country, declaring that Rockford was “about as typical as a city can be.” 40 Market
researchers flocked in droves to the shores of the Rock River to observe prototypical Americans in their
natural habitat. So it was here, in mid-century Rockford, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the
American Institute of Baking, and the Baking Industry Research Advisory Council collaborated on the
most elaborate experimental study of bread consumption in history. The findings of the study, which ran
from 1954 to 1955, spoke to a country's love affair with fluffy white bread: 95 percent of households
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