Aaron Bobrow-Strain
How did white bread, once an icon of American progress, become â€œwhite trashâ€? In this lively history of bakers, dietary crusaders, and social reformers, Aaron Bobrow-Strain shows us that what we think about the humble, puffy loaf says a lot about who we are and what we want our society to look like.,Â ,White Bread, teaches us that when Americans debate what one should eat, they are also wrestling with larger questions of race, class, immigration, and gender. As Bobrow-Strain traces the story of bread, from the first factory loaf to the latest gourmet ,pain au levain,, he shows how efforts to champion â€œgood foodâ€ reflect dreams of a better societyâ€”even as they reinforce stark social hierarchies., Â , In the early twentieth century, the factory-baked loaf heralded a bright new future, a world away from the hot, dusty, â€œdirtyâ€ bakeries run by immigrants. Fortified with vitamins, this bread was considered the original â€œsuperfoodâ€ and even marketed as patrioticâ€”while food reformers painted white bread as a symbol of all that was wrong with America., Â , The history of Americaâ€™s one-hundred-year-long love-hate relationship with white bread reveals a lot about contemporary efforts to change the way we eat. Today, the alternative food movement favors foods deemed ethical and environmentally correct to eat, and fluffy industrial loaves are about as far from slow, local, and organic as you can get. Still, the beliefs of early twentieth-century food experts and diet gurus, that getting people to eat a certain food could restore the nationâ€™s decaying physical, moral, and social fabric, will sound surprisingly familiar. Given that open disdain for â€œunhealthyâ€ eaters and discrimination on the basis of eating habits grow increasingly acceptable, ,White Bread, is a timely and important examination of what we talk about when we talk about food.
Food and Drink,Food,History,Nonfiction,History,Food History,Sociology,History,Microhistory,Food and Drink,Cooking,Food and Drink,Food Writing,Food and Drink,Food and Drink,Foodie
White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf