White Bread

by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

  23. Louisa May Alcott, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” in Bronson Alcott’s Fruitlands, eds. Clara Endicott Sears and Louisa May Alcott (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915).

  24. Sarah Josepha Hale, The Good Housekeeper (Boston: Weeks & Jordon, 1839), 17.

  25. “Vegetarian Festival,” New York Daily Times, September 5, 1853, 1; “College Rebellions,” New York Daily Times, January 8, 1854, 4.

  26. “Vegetarian Festival.”

  27. Albanese, Nature Religion in America, 117.

  28. “Quackery, Deceptics, and Humbug of the Age,” Wisconsin Herald and Grant County Advertiser, September 20, 1845, 1; “Humor,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 20, 1875, 3.

  29. Quoted in Iacobbo and Iacobbo, Vegetarian America, 54.

  30. Reprinted in William Mathews, Hours with Men and Books (Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1877).

  31. Iacobbo and Iacobbo, Vegetarian America; Richard W. Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.: Pioneering Health Reformer (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2006). On the connection to 1960s counterculture, see Warren James Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took On the Food Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

  32. Tompkins, Racial Indigestion.

  33. Dugan’s Baking Company, Dugan’s Fiftieth Anniversary (Brooklyn, NY: Dugan’s Baking Company, 1953).

  34. Little has been written on McCann’s food crusades, although several books address his involvement in debates about evolution and creationism. This section draws primarily on his newspaper columns and books, including Alfred Watterson McCann, The Science of Keeping Young (New York: George H. Doran, 1926); Alfred Watterson McCann, Starving America (Cleveland: F. M. Barton, 1913); McCann, The Science of Eating. Also “Medicine Man McCann,” Time, January 14, 1924.

  35. McCann, The Science of Eating, 203.

  36. McCann, Starving America, 64.

  37. Quoted in Harvey A. Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 13.

  38. McCann, The Science of Eating.

  39. My discussion of MacFadden and Physical Culture draws gratefully on these secondary sources: Susan Currell, “Eugenic Decline and Recovery in Self-Improvement Literature of the Thirties,” in Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s, eds. Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006); Robert Ernst, Weakness Is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr Macfadden (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991); Griffith, Born Again Bodies; Carolyn de la Peña, The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York: New York University Press, 2003). See also www.bernarrmacfadden.com.

  40. Bernarr MacFadden, Strength from Eating: How and What to Eat and Drink to Develop the Highest Degree of Health and Strength (New York: Physical Culture Publishing, 1901), 133.

  41. Bernarr MacFadden, Vitality Supreme (New York: Physical Culture Publishing, 1915), 139.

  42. Griffith, Born Again Bodies.

  43. Albert Edward Wiggam, The Fruit of the Family Tree (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1924), 4.

  44. On the eugenics movement in the United States, see Edwin Black, War against the Weak: America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003); Elof Axel Carlson, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001); Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell, Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006).

  45. Currell and Cogdell, Popular Eugenics.

  46. B. G. Jeffries, The Science of Eugenics: A Guide to Purity and Physical Manhood (Naperville, IL: J. L. Nichols, 1920), 6.

  47. Quoted in Currell, “Eugenic Decline and Recovery in Self-Improvement Literature of the Thirties,” 49.

  48. Paul Bowman Popenoe, Modern Marriage: A Handbook (New York: Macmillan, 1925).

  49. Charles F. Collin, letter to the editor, Physical Culture 23 (January 1910): 100.

  50. Griffith, Born Again Bodies, 117. In formulating this idea, MacFadden took euthenics—a popular alternative to eugenics typically associated with the feminine realm of home economics whose proponents believed in the possibility of racial betterment through education and environmental manipulation—and gave it a macho spin.

  51. Woods Hutchinson, “The Color Line in Foods,” American Magazine, March 1913, 86.

  52. Woods Hutchinson, “Some Diet Delusions,” McClure’s, April 1906; “Why Not Eat What You Like?” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 1906; “Bread Eaters Lead the World” (advertisement), Bedford (IA) Free Press, July 6, 1915.

  53. As one man remembered in an interview with the UCLA Oral History Program, “[During the 1920s,] my mother would give me sandwiches made on rye bread. And the kids would make fun of me … because they would be eating their sandwiches on white bread, on what we called kvachehdikeh, soft white bread. But my mother was a Jewish woman; she would go to the Varshehveh Bakery on Brooklyn Avenue and get good Jewish rye bread. And I remember feeling ashamed, somehow, that I was eating rye bread and the other kids weren’t.” Interview with Fred Okrand, conducted by Michael S. Balter, February–December 1982, UCLA Oral History Program, http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/Browse.do?descCvPk=27430. See also Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers, a Novel: A Struggle between a Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New (New York: Persea Books, 1975); Anzia Yezierska, Hungry Hearts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920).

  54. Woods Hutchinson, “The Joy of Eating,” Good Housekeeping, May 1913, 668–74.

  55. Ibid.

  56. Logan Glendening, “Clean Bill of Health Given to White Bread,” Simpson’s Daily Leader-Times, February 10, 1931, 4.

  57. Ibid. Statements against white bread are from Louis A. Rumsey, Resume of Statements against White Bread (Manhattan, KS: American Institute of Baking, 1927).

  58. Rumsey, Resume of Statements against White Bread.

  59. All quotes from ibid.

  60. Philip M. Lovell, “Care of the Body: Thirtieth Anniversary Column,” Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1929, H24–32.

  61. Calculated from United States Department of Commerce, Biennial Census of Manufacturing.

  62. These cartoons can be viewed at the Ruth Emerson Library of the American Institute of Baking in Manhattan, KS.

  63. H. C. Sherman to A. F. Woods and Marked-up Draft of the Statement, April 21, 1930, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, General Correspondence, 1906–1976, RG 16, “1930,” box 1486, National Archives II, College Park, Md. (hereafter USDA-NA). Except where specifically cited, I have constructed this story based on examination of correspondence, affidavits, drafts of the statement, and marginalia on drafts of the statement found in “1930,” box 1486, USDA-NA.

  64. E. V. McCollum, “The Real Truth,” Everybody’s Health 15, no. 5 (1930): 12–13.

  65. “Bread: A Wholesome Food (Final Draft),” May 1930, “1930,” box 1486, USDA-NA.

  66. R. Adams Dutcher to A. F. Woods, April 23, 1930, “1930,” box 1486, USDA-NA.

  67. Henry Stude to A. F. Woods and Enclosed Newspaper Clippings, June 7, 1930, “1930,” box 1486, USDA-NA.

  68. This specific version of the complaint adapted from http://www.glutenfreesociety.org/gluten-free-testimonials/.

  CHAPTER 4. VITAMIN BREAD BOOT CAMP

  1. Rod Dreher, Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots (New York: Three Rivers, 2006).

  2. Although the title “America’s most influential farmer” is widely used in conjunction with Salatin’s name in print and on the web, it is difficult to discern the honorific’s original source.

  3. Michael Pollan, “An Open Letter to the Next Farmer-in-Chief,” New York Times, October 12, 2008, MM62.

  4. Mary MacVean, “Victory Gardens Sprout Up Again,” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/features/la-hm-victory10–2009jan10,0,5210624.story; Eat Local Northwest blog, January 10, 2008, http://ea
tlocal.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/local-ish-lentils.

  5. Charlotte Biltekoff, “The Terror Within: Obesity in Post 9/11 U.S. Life,” American Studies 48 (2008): 5–30.

  6. David F. Smith, “Nutrition Science and the Two World Wars,” in Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. David F. Smith (London: Routledge, 1997).

  7. “Draft Officials Reject 380,000,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1941, 10; “How Serious Is Draft Rejection Rate in Waterloo?” Waterloo (IA) Daily Courier, April 11, 1941, 4; “Plan to Rebuild 20 Pct. of Men Unfit for Draft,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 11, 1941, 8; W. H. Sebrell, “Urgent Problems in Nutrition for National Betterment,” American Journal of Public Health 32 (1942): 15–20.

  8. “Plan to Rebuild 20 Pct. of Men Unfit for Draft”; Sebrell, “Urgent Problems in Nutrition for National Betterment.”

  9. Margaret G. Reid, Food for People (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1943); Sebrell, “Urgent Problems in Nutrition for National Betterment”; H. D. Kruse, “The Ocular Manifestations of Avitaminosis A, with Special Consideration of the Detection of Early Changes by Biomicroscopy,” Public Health Reports 56 (1941): 1301–24.

  10. Robert R. Williams Papers, MSS 47241, “Diaries,” box 1, “Enriched Foodstuff,” box 8, and “Enrichment Promotion,” box 11, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter Williams-LOC).

  11. Stanton Meyer, “The Whiter Your Bread, the Sooner You’re Dead,” Plans and Pointers, September 1941, 8–9.

  12. “U.S. Army May Eat Bread Enriched with Morale Vitamin,” Science News Letter, November 2, 1940, 277; “A Bread Revolution,” Science News Letter, January 11, 1941, 26–27; R.M. Wilder, “Hitler’s Secret Weapon Is Depriving People of Vitamins,” Science News Letter, April 12, 1941, 231.

  13. Clive M. McCay, “Bread of the Future,” in Food in War and in Peace: Consolidated Report of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Nutrition (Albany: New York State Legislative Documents, 1944), 180.

  14. Along with primary sources cited individually, this section draws on M. Ackerman, “The Nutritional Enrichment of Flour and Bread: Technological Fix of Half-Baked Solution?” in The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems, ed. L. Rosner (London: Routledge, 2004); Youngmee K. Park, Margaret A. McDowell, Eric Hanson, and Elizabeth A. Yetley, “History of Cereal-Grain Product Fortification in the United States,” Nutrition Today 36, no. 3 (2001); R. C. Sherwood, “Accomplishments in Cereal Fortification,” American Journal of Public Health 33, no. 5 (1943): 526–32; R. M. Wilder and Robert R. Williams, Enrichment of Flour and Bread: A History of the Movement (Washington, DC: National Research Council, 1944).

  15. Extraction rate is the proportion of the whole wheat berry retained in flour after the milling process. True whole wheat has an extraction rate of 100 percent. In the United States, white flour has an extraction rate of around 72 percent. Increasing extraction rates to 80 or 90 percent conserves flour by utilizing more of the bran and germ of the wheat berry, while yielding a flour somewhere between white and whole wheat.

  16. “Act of the Parliament of Canada P.C. 489 of January 22, 1942,” in MSS 47241, “Enriched Foodstuffs,” box 8, Williams-LOC.

  17. Extensive discussion of debates between Cornell Bread advocates and enriched white bread backers can be found in Roger William Riis Papers, MSS 75875, box 9, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Records of the Food and Drug Administration, Division of General Services, RG 88, “General Subject Files, 1951,” box 1435–1438, National Archives II, College Park, MD (hereafter FDA-NA); “1952,” box 2080, and “1954,” box 2580, USDA-NA.

  18. “Priority Goes to Energy,” Parent’s Magazine, April 1943, 50; “To Enrich or Not to Enrich: A Symposium,” Journal of Home Economics 37 (1945): 397–40; “Tenth Anniversary of Bread Enrichment,” What’s New in Home Economics (1951): 526–32; “The Best Bread in History,” Today’s Health, April 1960, 42–43; Robert Froman, “Our Daily Bread,” Collier’s, August 11, 1951, 28–29; Phipard, “Changes in the Bread You Buy”; Sherwood, “Accomplishments in Cereal Fortification.”

  19. Helen S. Mitchell, “A First Step,” Journal of Home Economics 37 (1945): 402.

  20. A. Thomas, “Future Prospects for the Milling Industry,” April 30, 1942, “Enriched Foodstuffs,” box 8, Williams-LOC. Although it took several years, the use of enriched flour produced by millers eventually displaced dough-ready enrichment tablets marketed by yeast manufacturers.

  21. Correspondence between Robert R. Williams and representatives of the milling and baking industry, found in “Diaries,” box 1, “Enriched Foodstuff,” box 8, and “Enrichment Promotion,” box 11, Williams-LOC.

  22. This section draws from Williams’s letters and diaries, found in ibid.

  23. The following paragraphs draw from correspondence found in “Diaries,” box 1, Williams-LOC.

  24. B. Stowe, “Mrs. Consumer Looks at Bread,” Northwest Miller, March 4, 1947, 58–60.

  25. “Diaries,” box 1, “Enriched Foodstuff,” box 8, and “Enrichment Promotion,” box 11, Williams-LOC.

  26. Amy Bentley, Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 67; Mary Anne Meehan, interviewed by Louise G. Bassett, February 6, 1936, “American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writer’s Project, 1936–1940,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html.

  27. Thomas Parran, “Bread Fights a Famine,” Better Homes and Gardens, April 1941, 16.

  28. Ibid.; “A Bread Revolution,” 26.

  29. D. Marsh, “More for Your Money in Enriched Bread and Flour,” Good Housekeeping, July 1942, 98–99.

  30. Town Talk bread advertisement run during 1941.

  31. Advertisement run in various editions of the Syracuse Herald Journal during 1941.

  32. Quoted in “Bakers and Public Backsliding on Use of Enriched Bread,” Science News Letter, February 7, 1942, 84.

  33. “There is a bomb” advertisement from Fleischmann’s 1942 enrichment campaign.

  34. Mr. Smith of Standard Brands, Inc., “The Synthetic Route to a Successful Enrichment Program,” September 16, 1942, “Enriched Foodstuffs,” box 8, Williams-LOC.

  35. Sherwood, “Accomplishments in Cereal Fortification.”

  36. James Tobey, “Enriched White Bread: A Greater Sales Asset,” Food Merchants’ Advocate, July 1942; Way and McCoy, Establishing a Retail Bakery, 2.

  37. Mr. Smith of Standard Brands, Inc., “The Synthetic Route to a Successful Enrichment Program”; “The Best Bread in History.”

  38. William L. Lawrence, “Chemists Proclaim New Nutrition Era,” New York Times, April 9, 1941, 28; Sebrell, “Urgent Problems in Nutrition for National Betterment”; Thomas C. Desmond, “Bread—Your New Perfect Food,” in Food in War and in Peace, Consolidated Report of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Nutrition, ed. New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Nutrition (Albany: New York State Legislature, 1944).

  39. “The Vital Story of Bread Enrichment,” Journal of Home Economics 43, no. 9 (1951): 608; Froman, “Our Daily Bread.” Local bakeries and bakers’ associations around the country reprinted Williams’s slogan in newspaper and magazine advertisements celebrating bread enrichment’s tenth anniversary in 1951.

  40. “Sociologist Looks at an American Community,” Life, September 12, 1949, 108–19.

  41. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Consumers’ Preferences among Bakers’ White Breads of Different Formulas: A Survey in Rockford, Illinois (Marketing Research Report No. 118) (Washington, DC: USDA, 1956).

  42. Ibid.

  43. A few examples of this trend include Lee Anderson, “Busted Staff of Life,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1947, 112–13; Warren E. Siegmond, “Poisonous Dough for Your Bread Money,” American Mercury, November 1958, 66–72; Clarence Woodbury, “Our Daily Bread,” Reader’s Digest, May 1945, 49–51.

  44. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Consumers’ Preferences among Ba
kers’ White Breads of Different Formulas; Millers’ National Federation, What People Think about “Bread”: Summary of Research Studies among Consumers and Nutrition Authorities (Washington, DC: Millers’ National Federation, 1948).

  45. Data on consumption patterns in the preceding paragraphs drawn from Burke, “Pounds and Percentages”; Panschar, Baking in America; Phipard, “Changes in the Bread You Buy”; “Boost for Bread”; Desmond, “Bread—Your New Perfect Food”; Walsh and Evans, Economics of Change in Market Structure, Conduct, and Performance; Wirtz, “Grain, Baking, and Sourdough Bread”; Way and McCoy, Establishing a Retail Bakery.

  46. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Consumers’ Preferences among Bakers’ White Breads of Different Formulas.

  47. “Premium-Priced Breads: Are They Worth the Money?” Consumer Reports, March 1958, 158–60; W. H. Sebrell, “Recollections of a Career in Nutrition,” Journal of Nutrition 115, no. 1 (1985): 23–38.

  48. Woodbury, “Our Daily Bread.”

  49. Anderson, “Busted Staff of Life,” 112.

  50. Woodbury, “Our Daily Bread.”

  51. Correspondence between Robert R. Williams and representatives of the milling and baking industry, found in “Diaries,” box 1, “Enriched Foodstuff,” box 8, and “Enrichment Promotion,” box 11, Williams-LOC.

  52. On the trouble with 1950s nostalgia, see Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

  53. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 283.

  54. K. A. Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War (New York: Routledge, 2005); Douglas Field, American Cold War Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005); Cynthia Hendershot, Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in Mid-Century America (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003); Eugenia Kaledin, Daily Life in the United States, 1940–1959: Shifting Worlds (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 2008); Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Lisle Abbott Rose, The Cold War Comes to Main Street: America in 1950 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999); Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).