WHITE BREAD IMPERIALISM - White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf - page 76

ic milling industry in Japan, roundly rejected the U.S. milling industry's appeals. 37 But in many ways
they accepted the basic premise of Locke's argument. The occupation offered a historic opportunity to
transition Japan toward wheat, and this, in turn, had important political ramifications. As SCAP com-
mander general Douglas MacArthur wrote in 1950, finding a reliable substitute (that is, wheat) for rice
was a key to “block[ing] the rapacious encroachment of Communism” in the region. 38 In 1958 Secret-
ary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson visited Japanese schools, where he reported seeing “kiddies at their
desks—each kiddie … with a big wheat roll made of American-grown wheat.” In Benson's account of
the trip, Japanese schoolchildren eating wheat wasn't merely a gift for U.S. farmers. It was a good sign
for world peace. 39
An age-old belief in the moral and physiological superiority of wheat bread had found a new home
in Cold War rhetoric: the conservative columnist George Sokolsky, for example, worried that rice would
not fortify Asia against Communist incursions, and urged the government to deploy America's genius
for advertising in the service of shifting Japan toward more vital foods. To support this idea, Sokol-
sky pointed to the popular radio adventure character Jack Armstrong, “the All American Boy,” who so
effectively cemented connections between fortitude and Wheaties in the 1930s. 40 This, in turn, might
have reminded readers of the central plotline of many Jack Armstrong shows: the handsome, wheat-
fueled All-American Boy travels to an exotic, non-Western land where he accomplishes heroic feats un-
imaginable to the natives.
Reporting on an eleven-fold increase in Japanese wheat consumption during the occupation, a widely
reprinted 1957 news story gave this plot a new twist: thanks to the presence of bread in Japanese school
lunches, “Japan's youth is literally outgrowing and outweighing its parents.” This effect could also be
observed in Japanese beauty pageants, where bread was producing “long-limbed beauties.” 41
Although white bread remained popular, most Japanese were not so convinced that they owed their
improved lives to it. U.S.-sponsored bread subsidies, school lunch programs, bread festivals, baking
classes, advertising campaigns, and sandwich recipe contests had only marginal impact. Bread produc-
tion increased dramatically during the 1950s, but the association of bread with vigor and civilization did
not stick. Even the founder of one of the country's largest postwar bakeries—a pioneering force behind
the Americanization of Japanese baking—complained in 1967, “I find myself the only one in my family
who stubbornly sticks to eating bread. … My children, who went off to study overseas, have come home
and now won't touch anything but rice. What's a father to do?” 42
Officials connected with the USDA and farm lobby continued to present wheat exports and bread
habits as central to peace, but others wavered. By the 1960s, talk of transitioning Japan to a wheat diet
had faded, and rice supplies topped the list of food security concerns. Wheat exports and American
bakery technology transfer continued, but with fewer of the trappings of a civilizing mission. The asso-
ciation between American bread habits and military strength was durable, but not unshakable. 43
In corn tortilla-eating Mexico, however, a new paradigm for food power was taking shape. It would
replace the focus on acute famine relief with a longer-term emphasis on tackling problems of poverty
and agricultural productivity. Born out of a specific combination of U.S. and Mexican government in-
terests, the new paradigm would eventually spread throughout the world, helping to cement associations
between industrial eating, economic development, and social stability.
REVOLUTIONARY BREAD
One of the most memorable photographic images of the Mexican Revolution depicts Emiliano Zapata
and Francisco Villa, surrounded by rough peasant soldiers, eating breakfast at Mexico City's elegant
Sanborn's Café. The two leaders have just hammered out a truce and triumphantly occupied the capital.