VITAMIN BREAD BOOT CAMP - White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf - page 65

moment in his 1946 Long Telegram, which clearly and unflinchingly introduced the country to a world
organized around two antagonistic, irreconcilable poles, with freedom, justice, free enterprise, and the
American way hanging in the balance. Again. 54
Wonder bread rolled out its iconic “Builds a Body 8 Ways” ad campaign in the thick of the Berlin
Airlift and, during its first year, it would have shared newspaper space with the first Soviet atomic bomb
test, the first major FBI report on Communist subversives in Hollywood, the creation of the German
Democratic Republic, the declaration of the People's Republic of China, rising tensions on the Korean
peninsula, and the last bloody gasps of the Greek civil war. Indeed, Wonder bread's infamous cam-
paign—which would later run afoul of the FTC for its extreme claims about bread's ability to boost
children's performance—mapped fairly neatly onto the peak years of the Red Scare. Regardless of how
scared Americans actually felt while slathering oleo on their morning toast and reading the paper, the
promise of peace had been shattered and replaced by a commitment to perpetual readiness. 55
Atomic-age civil defense planners knew how important bread was. Reflecting back on the London
Blitz and Berlin Airlift from the vantage of the early 1950s, civil defense experts noted that “under such
conditions the consumption of bread rose to twice the usual level. Bread, the staff of life, apparently
becomes all the more a staple food in times of severe stress.” After a nuclear attack, they concluded in
numerous reports, bread would probably be the main source of food for the affected population. The
USDA and other government agencies mobilized bakers to prepare for attacks and put the public on
notice to expect a “bread and water diet when [the] A-bomb strikes.” In 1951, the popular science and
technology magazine Science News Letter urged New Yorkers to keep a good supply of spreads like jam
and peanut butter on hand to perk up their bread and water diet in anything “short of a complete disas-
ter.” Even if keeping peanut butter and jelly on hand for nuclear holocaust lunches wasn't at the top of
most housewives' to-do lists, kitchens were still battlegrounds. The invisible germs and swarthy immig-
rants that threatened domestic hygiene and national vitality in the early twentieth century had given way
to the Communist menace. 56
As in previous periods of national emergency, Cold War popular culture consistently depicted moth-
ers as both the country's first line of defense against invisible enemies—and, potentially, its weakest
link. According to the emergent logic of permanent readiness, mothers would oversee the creation of
warm, protective havens for the country's future Cold Warriors, while guarding against maternal in-
stincts that might produce overly soft “mamma's boys.” 57
In the heat of the early Cold War, mothers made sure their families ate for victory, but not just so
that they could fight in faraway lands. Cold Warriors would have to compete on multiple seemingly
mundane fronts. As K. A. Cuordileone observed in his history of postwar manhood, competition on the
high school football field, in the national marketplace, and in the international arms and science races
blurred together into one critical effort aimed at demonstrating the superiority of the American way.
Competitive spirit in the pursuit of individual happiness represented America's secret weapon against
the powerful machine of Soviet command and control. 58
In this context, health and vigor sold bread far more than taste or freshness. As the frequent Colliers
contributor Robert Froman lamented in 1951, it grieved most bakers “that their bread is often judged not
chiefly for its taste and appetite appeal, as are other foods, but for its nutritional values.” 59
The postwar association between industrial white bread and competitive vigor could easily have been
reversed. After all, driven by consumers' mistaken idea that softer bread meant fresher bread, the baking
industry had begun using a witch's brew of chemical dough conditioners to pump the standard white
balloon loaf from its already fairly soft prewar seven cubic centimeters per ounce to its ethereal post-
war ten cubic centimeters per ounce. If the country feared soft boys, why feed children history's soft-