White Bread

by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

  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 “hoodwinking” 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 children 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 typical 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 book-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, although 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 repeated 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 pamphlets 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 lampooning “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 statement in support of white bread. Other breads were fine foods, they argued, but white bread better suited the economic crisis: white flour kept better than whole wheat, was cheaper to mill, and more efficient to bake. Because fine flour used less of each kernel than whole wheat, it helped farmers by increasing demand. Leftover bran could even be sold as animal feed, aiding another branch of agriculture. Couldn’t the USDA clear up, once and for all, the fuss about nutrition?

  A. F. Woods, chief science officer at the USDA, agreed to a statement supporting bread in general, which he wrote and distributed to nine of the nation’s top nutrition experts for endorsement. H. C. Sherman, a leading expert at Columbia University, wrote back immediately. Something must be done to moderate the influence of “cranks and food fakers,” he agreed, but “millers and bakers are now engaged in a more active propaganda in favor of the white than is anyone in favor of the whole wheat.” Without radical changes, he warned, the USDA statement would clearly “take the side of the white bread.”63

  The other eight experts signed without qualms. On this issue, the baking industry, the USDA, and mainstream nutrition science were largely in accord. White bread critics’ most convincing evidence, they argued, had a fatal flaw: no one could deny that dogs, chickens, rats, railway workers, or sailors fed only white bread for extended periods would sicken. But, as E. V. McCollum, discoverer of vitamins A, B, and D, demanded on the pages of Everybody’s Health that same year: who eats only white bread? 64 White bread is not a perfect food, he argued, but no food is perfect alone. The now-axiomatic mantra that, in moderation, any food can be a healthy part of a balanced diet won the day for industrial white bread.

  H. C. Sherman eventually signed the USDA statement, convinced by his colleagues’ gospel of moderation. But, looking back, he was correct about the statement. It reads like most government dietary advice today, presenting different sides so as to appear neutral, but in fact taking industry’s side in subtle ways. “White and whole wheat breads are both wholesome foods,” it declared. Whole wheat might be better, but “no person subsists on one food. … The form [of bread] eaten may be left to the choice of the individual when the remainder of the diet is constituted as to contribute the necessary minerals, vitamins, and any necessary roughage.”65 Both breads stood on equal footing as long as moderation and variety were observed, the statement declared. But this ignored the fact that many poor Americans, subsisting heavily on bread, didn’t have the luxury of a diverse diet. Tellingly, one of the statement’s industry-friendly endorsers successfully suppressed parts of the document suggesting that people relying heavily on white bread must take extra care to complement their staple with fruits and vegetables.66

  When the government statement went out in May 1930, bakers beamed. “Another triumph for white bread,” the headline in Northwestern Miller proclaimed. And Henry Stude, president of the American Bakers Association (ABA), wrote to the USDA’s A. F. Woods thanking him for his work. The ABA, he gushed, “has received innumerable clippings where this item has appeared and innumerable editorials brought forth by this news item.” Indeed, the statement, reprinted in newspapers around the country, was interpreted as a ringing endorsement of white bread. As a Kansas City Star headline declared, “Now we can enjoy our white bread.”67

  The USDA statement didn’t silence white bread’s most ardent critics, but it did crystallize an emerging commonsense view. As the 1930s progressed, the idea that white bread not only didn’t cause disease, but could also be part of a good diet gained steady traction. Redeemed, white bread offered comfort in the dark years of the Depression. Amylophobia waned.

  MODERATION‘S DISCONTENTS

  Mainstream policy makers, focused on the body’s balance sheet of vitamins and minerals and leery of challenging any sector of the food industry, liked the idea that every edible contributed something to a healthy diet when eaten in moderation. But what if some forms of wheat caused harm when taken in any amount? By the 1930s, white bread’s vitamin and fiber deficits were well understood, but Graham, McCann, and MacFadden—like gluten-free advocates today—discerned more insidious vectors of harm. From their vantage point, even infinitesimal amounts of white bread could unbalance metabolisms and inflame tissues; moderation was no shield against harm. For decades, gauzy claims like this have earned scorn and the label “quackery.” Today, however, they’re applied not just to refined flour but to all wheat products. They’ve returned, with some plausibility and much acclaim, in the present-day justifications for gluten-free eat
ing.

  This resurgence draws strength from new ways of imagining digestive health on genetic and molecular levels. But striking continuities between past and present speak to long-running clashes between competing approaches to health care. If there is one narrative that comes up again and again on gluten-free blogs, it is a story that pits a suffering woman, excruciatingly attuned to her body’s response to wheat, against the seemingly deaf ears of medical authority. “My doctor doesn’t believe me. He says my results are anecdotal because they haven’t been proven with double blind studies.”68 This is the self-diagnosed gluten intolerant’s lament: doctors and insurance companies don’t want to take the time to treat me as an individual patient, with an individual genome and an intuitive understanding of my body.

  As with Graham or MacFadden, we still see a clash between lay and expert authority. Although most wheat critics, by cultural necessity, sought to ground their claims in the language of science, at root we see an encounter between the privileging of supposedly objective laboratory science and a respect for natural intuition. And, in truth, while the more “natural” focus on health may not always have logic or legitimate double-blind studies on its side, it is very good at identifying blind spots in the vision of mainstream science. In their idiosyncratic way, fringe health movements help expose the unspoken cultural assumptions, political interests, and subjective decisions woven into science.

  Graham’s prescriptions, for example, were irrefutably kooky by the scientific standards of his day. Nevertheless, he grasped something important about heroic medicine’s inability to address the afflictions of emerging modern life. In the same way, should it surprise us that today, when private insurance companies tyrannize health with all the subtlety of a bloodletter, many people want to take health care into their own hands through diet and self-diagnosis? All those elite athletes, Hollywood stars, and Wall Street brokers bragging that gluten-free gives them leaner, meaner performance? Perhaps they aren’t kooks, just people who have perceived the power of individual self-control as a defense against the dangers of a modern food system and the failings of medical authorities.

  If this were true, the pursuit of perfect health and vigorous bodies through dietary discipline would allow us to care for ourselves in a deeper and more thoughtful way. More often than not, however, it just embroils aspirants in taxing new fears and compulsions, new searches for expert insight, and new, more rigorous ways of fortifying one’s body against decay. Dreams of perfect health through bodily discipline can easily become anxious nightmares.

  The problem with this relentless quest for individual health through dietary discipline is not just the toll it takes on mental health. The problem, for society as a whole, is that America’s dream of achieving health through dietary discipline frequently confuses self-control with moral virtue. Whether you’re talking about Grahamites eating moral brown bread, a whole wheat bread eater entering one of Physical Culture’s contests of eugenic fitness, or a celebrity raving about the way avoiding gluten sharpened her thinking and streamlined her body, celebrations of bodily discipline are always implicitly juxtaposed against the specter of unfit and irresponsible citizens. When weakness is a crime and sickness arises from individual choice, it’s easy to cast people not conforming to prevailing ideas about health or body image as villains. In this way, even the most well-meaning efforts to spread the gospel of good bread (or no bread) run the risk of reinforcing social hierarchies and exclusions. By turning questions of public health into issues of individual discipline, the dream of perfect bodies achieved through diet also makes it easier to ignore the root causes of those problems. The dream of maximum health through self-control individualizes and medicalizes what, in many cases, are social and political problems.

  To be sure, the current wave of gluten intolerance will fade away in time, leaving some significant mark on our dietary dreams but losing its urgency. The deeper underlying concerns won’t go away. Amylophobias reflect half-articulated concerns about the pathologies of a modern food system, the rigors of competitive striving for status, and the failings of the health care system. They are an index of anxiety about modern life. These concerns won’t go away until we begin to address them directly, rather than through individual food choices.

  4

  VITAMIN BREAD BOOT CAMP

  Dreams of Strength and Defense

  Nations that have bread are the nations that stand against the villainy of despots, tyrants, and fools. … Let’s not forget that the real sinews of war are wrought by bread that builds muscle and brawn . . . bread shortens the war and lengthens the peace. If any man doubts the truth of this story, then he’d better get ready to be shot as a patriot or shackled as a slave.

  —Spaulding Bakeries advertisement, Chicago, 1944

  NATIONAL SECURITY FOOD

  During Walla Walla’s long, high desert summers, residents and wine tourists flock to a repurposed bus depot just off Main Street for the weekly farmers’ market. To avoid the blazing afternoon sun, my family usually goes early in the morning, but we almost always end up getting caught in the heat. You can’t shop quickly here. A dozen encounters with friends and acquaintances inevitably foil any attempt to just duck in briefly and pick up a few items. One conversation turns into another. I see former students selling produce. My kids run off with classmates. My wife, Kate, bumps into someone she’s been meaning to call and begins to make plans to hang out later. A colleague introduces her parents visiting from out of town. Soon two hours have passed, and I still haven’t gotten to the fruit stands. Visiting the Walla Walla farmers’ market feels like an alternative food movement fantasy come to life. It’s a wonderful picture: tight-knit social bonds and community ties forged over local produce.

  One thing doesn’t quite fit the alternative food movement stereotype, though: take a quick stroll around the parking area and it wouldn’t be unusual to find NRA decals outnumbering Sierra Club stickers. Tea Party slogans may well grace more bumpers than Obama or Greenpeace. We tend to think of the alternative food movement as a liberal, Birkenstock-wearing lifestyle club, but that image doesn’t quite pan out here. One of the local food vendors is our Republican state representative.

  If you look hard enough, the liberal stereotype doesn’t always hold up outside Walla Walla, either. As Rob Dreher writes in his book Crunchy Cons, legions of “Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, [and] right-wing nature lovers” have long been drawn to the alternative food movement. Right-wing talk radio personalities might rail against liberal locavores and out-of-touch Whole Foods shoppers but, as Dreher notes, conservatives who look carefully find that the alternative food movement expresses many of their values.1 Participants on the left and right both sense something authentically “American” in the romance of Jeffersonian agrarianism—the idea that small communities of independent private-property-owning farmers form the backbone of democracy. The alternative food movement, like many conservatives, emphasizes the virtues of decentralization, self-sufficiency, and local independence. Images of community, family, and small-town life gracing alternative food movement literature would seem right at home on a brochure for Focus on the Family. Perhaps most palpably, a Libertarian anti-regulation streak runs deep through the whole alternative food movement, with conservative rancher Joel Salatin as its current celebrity spokesman. Considering that Salatin holds a degree from the ultra-conservative Bob Jones University and evinces fierce allegiance to the Christian Right, you wouldn’t think his ideas would get far in the “liberal” alternative food movement. Yet Salatin’s outspoken condemnations of bureaucratic red tape and what he sees as regulations hampering small-scale alternative food production earned him the title “America’s most influential farmer” and made him a minor celebrity in liberal enclaves like Berkeley, California.2 When it comes to lionizing the independent spirit of family farms, Left and Right can easily sit at the same table.

  Since 9/11, liberal
and conservative members of the alternative food movement have also begun to find common ground on the idea that “good food” and national security go hand in hand. Best-selling food writer Michael Pollan crystallized this new language of food and national security. On the eve of the 2008 presidential elections, Pollan’s “Open Letter to the Next Farmer-in-Chief,” published in the New York Times, roused thousands of urban gourmets and local foodies to unprecedented interest in the national politics of agriculture. Transforming the U.S. food system was not just necessary for health and the environment, Pollan declared, “it is a critical issue of national security.” A centralized food system under the command of a few large companies was more vulnerable to attack and interruption than a small-scale decentralized provisioning network, Pollan argued. A system that specialized in producing gargantuan portions of junk food made the country weak and unfit to fight.3

  Members of the alternative food movement quickly grasped the appeal of national security rhetoric. Organizers of farmers’ markets, community gardens, and local food projects saw that they could use the language of security to give urgency to their causes. As a Seattle-based locavore blog advertised, lentils grown in the Palouse hills near my home weren’t just tasty and light on carbon. Because they helped build healthy soils and food self-sufficiency, they “might just be the ideal national security food.”4

  In part, this turn toward national security was tactical—appropriating a powerful discourse from the right for the movement’s own ends. But it also reflected a real desire. The alternative food movement seemed to pine for the passionate intensity and personal sacrifice generated by wartime mobilization. WWII-era posters entreating Americans to conserve food, eat less meat, and grow their own vegetables circulated through alternative food movement websites. How can we muster that kind of national purpose and urgency around our campaigns? food activists asked wistfully. As if in response to that question, new “Victory Gardens” sprang up on college campuses across the country and environmental organizations adopted WWII-era rhetoric, asking members to observe “Meatless Mondays” as part of the fight against climate change.