In the generation before mine, white sliced bread was a luxury. One family I knew only let the father eat store-bought bread (which they called "light bread"), while the rest of the family had fresh baked biscuits or cornbread, which now seems totally backwards for a patriarchy. When I was a kid, white bread was an everyday thing, although not Wonder bread because it was relatively expensive. Getting a loaf of Roman Meal bread was a treat! Now even the thought of eating tasteless, gummy, white sliced bread makes me queasy. (via Boing Boing)
Making white flour and also white rice, with stone grinding, leaves some of the germ in despite the best efforts to make it as white as possible.
ReplyDeleteIt is the invention of the steel rollers that caused massive nutritional problems all over the world. Even the Japanese Royal family had mysterious health problems caused by this newly manufactured white rice.
As the video mentions, eventually they figured it out and added the missing vitamins back in. Note that if you get whole wheat bread, they don't need to add these vitamins.
I remember when Wonder Bread took this new federal mandate and turned it into an advantage with their commercials: "Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 8 ways" referring to the 8 vitamins the government was forcing them to add to the bread.