Wow, that brings back memories. It’s been 45 years since I read Heidi.
Sailors ate hardtack. I’ve been told it’s like gnawing on the side of a brick. I don’t imagine bread eaten by the poor was very soft. The weevils provided lots of protein.
The History documentary mentions the development of commercially slicing bread. It was difficult for machines to hold and evenly slice loaves of bread without squishing it.
Sliced bread makes such great sandwiches. I’ve tried cutting a loaf of bread and the slices are always too thick and uneven to make a nice sandwich. It’s edible but not very satisfying to look at.
Hardtack is still available: online, and in grocery stores from the Pacific Northwest up to Alaska. Kids up there chow down on pilot bread spread with lard and sprinkled with sugar, which is bad for them.
This drives me crazy too. I love white bakery bread for toast, but I don’t eat enough toast to use the whole loaf before it gets moldy. I’ve tried putting half of a loaf in the freezer a few times, but then forget about it.
Concerning bread spoilage, since we bake bread at home with fair regularity we tend not to lose a great deal to waste, but yeah, a homemade loaf can go stale in less than a week for certain. One thing I do if confronted with, say, a third of a loaf of homemade bread after four or five days is to cut up the bread into small cubes, melt a couple tablespoons of butter and add some some seasonings and toss it all together in a bowl, then spread them out on a cooking sheet and bake 'em in the oven at 375 for about 15 minutes. They make great croutons for salads, or are great for snacking on.
Just about the same here. Kids eat whatever their parents buy and white bread is especially yummy to kids. For me, I was strongly averse to brown bread. The only time I ever saw it was if other kids were eating it in the cafeteria. I hated eating in the cafeteria because of the nauseating smell and somehow I associated that smell with alien, brown bread. I think I had some idea that brown bread was inferior or the families that ate it were poor or something. Stupid kid logic.
Wonder Bread was actually something of a wonder when it first was introduced a century ago. It had preservatives that retarded spoilage, it was pre-sliced, and they were also one of the first bakeries to introduce adding vitamins and minerals to their bread.
As mandated by the US and Canadian governments.
“The first War Food Order, enacted in 1943, stated that all flour sold for interstate commerce would be enriched according to FDA standards. This order was later repealed in 1946, but was followed in 1952 with official standards of identity for enriched bread (FDA, 1952a, 1952b).”
This was later twisted into “the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Since everything else was sacrificed for the war effort, the head of the War Foods Administration tried banning sliced bread. Really, just banning new slicing machines at neighborhood bakeries. The idea was to save steel and wax paper.
Consumers revolted and the WFA had to admit it couldn’t find any savings. The ban was lifted just two months after it started in 1943. Familiar, pre-sliced Wonder Bread changed consumption patterns radically. It was one of the few things more popular than the war.
I’m shocked, simply shocked, I tell you! Wonder bread isn’t nutritious? B-b-b-but it builds strong bodies 12 ways! When I was small, I tried to figure out how they came up with 12 ways. Length, width, and then lots of diagonals, I figured. My mom refused to buy it.
It looked like it’d be hard to spread peanut butter on it without tearing the bread, a real issue when you have four kids eating peanut butter sandwiches every Friday. My now-ex’s parents thought Wonder Bread was the Cadillac of breads and had it on the table at every meal.
I don’t remember ever not thinking that Wonder bread was of little nutritional value.
I am in the camp though that does not place the same serving size of a French baguette in the same league. Maybe it’s the amount of chewing it takes, maybe it’s the lack of all the ultra processed emulsifiers and such, but I feel more satisfied eating the crusty baguette, which means less risk of overeating.
I certainly never thought about it much growing up. We always had white bread - though never Wonder Bread or its ilk (my father was a sales rep for a company that manufactured bags for bread, among othe things, so we always bought one of “his” brands).
I was probably into my 20s before I thought much about it.
Nowadays, we get “whole wheat white” which I guess is regular marshmallow bread with some extra fiber added. I don’t sweat it too much - I simply don’t eat too much bread anyway, so I doubt it makes a difference. Even more substantial breads aren’t likely to have much more nutritional value. Hell, even a wholegrain bread isn’t perfect; you’d be better off eating something like a pilaf made from the wheat berries.
There is a cultivar of wheat that is called “white whole wheat” because when ground it is notably paler than the usual whole wheat flour. It appears white in baked goods even with all the bran and germ in it. King Arthur brand sells it.
Or, sure, it’s mostly “marshmallow” white with just a sprinkle of traditional whole wheat bits in it.
