White Bread

by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

  55. Daniel Yergin calls this the genesis of the “national security state”—“the unified pattern of attitudes, policies, and institutions by which [organizing for perpetual confrontation] was to be effected.” Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 5. This new and sustained cultural, political, and intuitional commitment to what Dean Acheson called “the long, long pull” is typically associated with Red-baiting, the supercharged military-industrial complex, and foreign entanglements, but it also seeped into the country’s domestic culture. It found everyday expression as a culture of civil defense and obsessive concern about the invisible threat of Communist subversion. By 1950, at the latest, “The American people … had become exquisitely, constantly aware of communism anywhere and everywhere. Countless polls, editorials, and man-in-the-street interviews supported [this] observation, and there seemed no end to the torment.” Rose, The Cold War Comes to Main Street, 22.

  56. “Bread and Water Diet When A-Bomb Strikes,” Science News Letter, November 19, 1951, 313; “The London Food Conference: A Summary of Findings,” Public Health Reports 67, no. 7 (1952): 608–18; “Food in Civil Defense,” Technology Review 55, no. 4 (1953): 198; Majorie M. Heseltine, “Feeding of Mothers and Children under Emergency Conditions,” Public Health Reports 67, no. 9 (1952): 872–75.

  57. Michael Paul Rogin, Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 240–45.

  58. Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War.

  59. Froman, “Our Daily Bread.” While marketing study after marketing study indicated that housewives’ top two concerns in choosing bread were its softness and flavor, these were virtually indistinguishable across all major brands of standard white bread. Therefore, housewives turned to other distinguishing traits to make their decisions. Advertising of any kind weighed heavily in their choices, studies found, but nutrition seemed particularly important. According to one study, nutrition information was the number one thing housewives wanted to see on bread wrappers, beating out brand name, weight, and baking date. Nabisco, Inc., Market Planning Research Division, “A Survey of Consumers’ Reactions to Vital Bread,” 1963, Raymond Loewy Papers, MSS 62142, “Nabisco,” box 152, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  60. Siegmond, “Poisonous Dough for Your Bread Money.”

  61. Horace Reynolds, “Give Us Bread Not Fluff,” Christian Science Monitor, November 12, 1949, 6.

  CHAPTER 5. WHITE BREAD IMPERIALISM

  1. This attitude has historical roots that predate the Cold War, of course. For an excellent survey, see Warren Belasco, Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

  2. European bread consumption statistics from League of Nations, “Rural Dietaries in Europe. Annex: Report on Bread,” August 26, 1939, “France 1950–1954,” box 152, FAS-NA. My account of the 1946–48 crisis in this section is drawn from Bentley, Eating for Victory; Harry Fornari, Bread upon the Waters: A History of United States Grain Exports (Nashville: Aurora, 1973); Thomas J. Knock, “Feeding the World and Thwarting Communists,” in Architects of the American Century, eds. David Schmitz and T. Christopher Jesperson (Chicago: Imprint, 2000); Dan Morgan, Merchants of Grain (New York: Viking, 1979); Robert L. Paarlberg, Food Trade and Foreign Policy: India, the Soviet Union, and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).

  3. Harriman to U.S. Secretary of State, untitled cable, July 19, 1946, “United Kingdom, Breadstuffs, 1946–1949,” box 966, FAS-NA.

  4. Quoted in Bentley, Eating for Victory, 145. See also “Truman’s Remarks to Citizen Food Committee,” New York Times, October 2, 1947, 4.

  5. Bentley, Eating for Victory.

  6. “Bread on the Waters,” Consumers’ Guide, May 6, 1946, 79. See also “How to Do with Less Bread,” Life, May 6, 1946, 30; “New Dark Bread Is Part of U.S. Contribution to the Grave World Food Crisis,” Life, March 4, 1946, 79; “Greatest in History,” Time, June 10, 1946; “Conserve Bread,” Parent’s Magazine, May 1946, 68; “Save Wheat,” American Home, May 1946, 102. Examples of American skepticism about bread conservation are cited in Paul Mallon, “Overhauling of UNRA by Hoover Expected,” Western Newspaper Union Syndication, April 28, 1947.

  7. “Bread: It Is the First Concern of a Hungry World. Trouble Looms for the Nations Which Cannot Provide It,” Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1947, E4; “Guns, Bread, and Butter,” Farm Journal, September 1953, 24; H. R. Baukhage, “U.S. Farmer Will Beat Communism,” Associated Press Syndication, October 2, 1947.

  8. FAS Field Office in Paris to U.S. Secretary of State (declassified cable), “French Import Requirements, Food Items,” May 12, 1947; FAS Field Office in Paris to U.S. Secretary of State (declassified cable), “Food Situation and Related Political Developments in France,” February 20, 1947; FAS Field Office in Paris to U.S. Secretary of State (declassified cable), “The Breadgrain Situation in France,” April 9, 1947; FAS Field Office in Paris to U.S. Secretary of State (declassified cable), June 11, 1946, all in “France, Breadstuffs, 1946–1949,” box 9, FAS-NA.

  9. “Marshall-Aid Ship Cheered in France,” New York Times, May 11, 1948, 20; Joseph Alsop and Stewart Alsop, “Food Is Politics,” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1946, A4.

  10. U.S. Ambassador in Tehran to U.S. Secretary of State (declassified cable), “Irano-Soviet Wheat Agreement,” December 3, 1949, “Iran, Breadstuffs, 1946–1949,” box 780, FAS-NA.

  11. FAS Field Office in Athens to U.S. Secretary of State, August 31, 1948, “Greece, Breadstuffs, 1946–1949,” box 724, FAS-NA. See also Yergin, Shattered Peace.

  12. “Food in Civil Defense.” On the effect of the Berlin Airlift on civil defense planners’ understanding of bread’s role in the Cold War, see also “The London Food Conference: A Summary of Findings”; V. P. Syndenstricker, “Nutrition Conditions under Wartime Conditions,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine (1943): 749–65; Heseltine, “Feeding of Mothers and Children under Emergency Conditions.”

  13. Yergin, Shattered Peace, 354.

  14. Kaledin, Daily Life in the United States; Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

  15. Kaledin, Daily Life in the United States. See also Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009). For a classic expression of the shift in Americans’ understanding of what made the country exceptional, see David Morris Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).

  16. Belmonte, Selling the American Way.

  17. Records of the U.S. Information Agency, RG 306, American National Exhibition, Moscow, 1957–1959, “Press Clipping File,” box 3, USDA-NA.

  18. Rudolf Flesch, Why Johnny Can’t Read, and What You Can Do about It (New York: Harper & Row, 1955); William B. Murphy, “The Challenge of the Future: An Overview,” in Food and Civilization: A Symposium (Washington, DC: USIA Voice of America Lecture Series, 1966), 6.

  19. Oriana Atkinson, “My Life behind the Iron Curtain,” Woman’s Home Companion, October 1946, 30–31; “Russian Works Longer for His Food, ECA Says,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1949, 16; Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005); J. A. Livingston, “U.S. and Soviet Price Systems Far Apart,” Big Spring (TX) Daily Herald, June 10, 1956, 26.

  20. “Some Reds Stand in Bread Lines,” Gastonian, September 22, 1963, 2-A; “Bread Scarce in Soviet Cupboards,” Lima News, September 24, 1963, 1.

  21. Livingston, “U.S. and Soviet Price Systems Far Apart”; Lauren Soth, “Consumer Goods Scarce,” Corpus Christi Times, August 30, 1955, 16; Willard Edwards, “Soviet Troops Confused,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 19, 1956, A3. Interestingly, some of these
articles subtly (and not so subtly) introduce criticisms of U.S. industrial bread. They reverse the binary of good American bread versus bad Soviet bread, while reinforcing the larger architecture of alimentary exceptionalism.

  22. Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); “Bread from France,” New York Times, May 16, 1962, 37.

  23. J. J., “Good Food Again” (letter to the editor), Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1948, A4. For an example of concerns about French bread’s relation to military defeat during World War II, see McCay, “Bread of the Future.”

  24. “ ‘Bread of Madness’ Infects Town,” Life, September 10, 1951, 25–27; Murphy, “The Challenge of the Future,” 8.

  25. Janet Nickerson, “Bread Gets an Airing,” New York Times, March 13, 1955, SM52.

  26. See, for example, Mark Hammond and Jacqueline Ruyak, “The Decline of the Japanese Diet: From MacArthur to McDonalds,” East West, October 2008, 44–53.

  27. On Japan’s long struggles over the place of foreign foods in its diet, see Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, “We Eat Each Other’s Food to Nourish Our Body: The Global and the Local and Mutually Constituent Forces,” in Food in Global History, ed. Raymond Grew (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999); Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, “Popularizing a Military Diet in Wartime and Postwar Japan,” Asian Anthropology 1 (2002): 1–30.

  28. Yamakazi Baking Company, From a Corn of Wheat: Yamakazi (Tokyo: Yamakazi Baking Company, 1996).

  29. “Survey of Bread and Flour Utilization by the Japanese People,” 1950, Records of the Supreme Commander of the Allies Powers RG 331, Public Opinion and Sociological Research Division, “General Subject Files,” National Archives II, College Park, MD (hereafter SCAP-NA).

  30. “Supplementary School Lunch Program, Public Health and Welfare Bulletin,” June 1948, Civil Affairs Section, Tohoku Civil Affairs Region, “Public Health and Welfare Activities, 1946–1951,” box 258, SCAPNA; “Report on Public Health and Welfare in Japan,” c. 1949–1950, Economic and Scientific Section, Price and Distribution Division, “Food Branch, 1946–1951,” box 8395, SCAP-NA.

  31. “Supplementary School Lunch Program, Public Health and Welfare Bulletin”; “Tabulation of Public Opinion of School Lunch,” July 25, 1951, Economic and Scientific Section, Price and Distribution Division, “Food Branch, 1946–1951,” box 8395, SCAP-NA.

  32. On Japanese attempts to connect wheat diets and military strength, which predate the postwar period, see Cwiertka, “Popularizing a Military Diet in Wartime and Postwar Japan.”

  33. “Survey of Bread and Flour Utilization by the Japanese People.”

  34. “The Complete School Lunch: Providing Bread and Butter,” August 9, 1949, Civil Affairs Section, Hokkaido Civil Affairs Region, “Civil Affairs Files, 1945–1951,” box 2534, SCAP-NA; “Instruction from Ministry of Education concerning School Lunch,” n.d., Civil Affairs Section, Hokkaido Civil Affairs Region, “Civil Affairs Files, 1945–1951,” box 2534, SCAP-NA; Vice Education Minister to Prefectural Governors, “Concerning the Encouragement and Popularization of the School Lunch Program,” December 11, 1946, Headquarters Division, “Public Welfare Files, 1945–1951,” box 2278, SCAP-NA; “Recent Tendencies of School Lunch Program and Counter Measures,” 1949, Civil Information and Education Section, Education Division, Physical Education and Youth Affairs Branch, “Topical Files, 1946–1951,” box 5721, SCAP-NA; Chief Manager of School Lunch, Health, and Physical Education Section, Hokkaido Board of Education, to SCAP GHQ, “Nowadays Condition of School Lunch in Hokkaido,” c. 1950, Civil Affairs Section, Hokkaido Civil Affairs Region, “Civil Affairs Files, 1945–1951,” box 2534, SCAP-NA.

  35. “Instruction from Ministry of Education concerning School Lunch.”

  36. Chief Manager of School Lunch, Health, and Physical Education Section, Hokkaido Board of Education, to SCAP GHQ, “Nowadays Condition of School Lunch in Hokkaido.”

  37. J. L. Locke, “Suggestions for Improvement of the Health and Attitude of the Japanese People by Supplementing Their Diet with Enriched White Bread,” August 3, 1949, Price and Distribution Division, “Food Branch, 1946–1951,” box 8395, SCAP-NA; SCAP GHQ to J. L. Locke, September 26, 1949, Price and Distribution Division, “Food Branch, 1946–1951,” box 8395, SCAP-NA.

  38. General MacArthur to Ambassador Gasciogne, October 6, 1950, Price and Distribution Division, “Food Branch, 1946–1951,” box 8395, SCAP-NA.

  39. Reprinted in “Feeding the World’s Hungry: Cure for Farm Troubles? An Interview with Ezra Taft Benson,” Altoona (PA) Mirror, March 22, 1958, 15.

  40. George E. Sokolsky, “China’s Rice,” Hearst Newspaper Syndication, January 17, 1953.

  41. “Japanese Eat Various Types of Bread, Grow Taller,” Associated Press Syndication, December 24, 1957.

  42. Yamakazi Baking Company, From a Corn of Wheat, 176.

  43. Recall that even occupation officials debated whether rice might be a more culturally appropriate bastion of strength. Strains of U.S. popular opinion had also made this argument. For example, a widely reprinted 1951 news piece argued, “The most important thing for the majority of the people of Asia is not Democracy, nor Communism, nor any political ideology—but food, which means life itself. And in most of Asia food is rice.” “Who Controls Rice Supply Controls Asiatic Destiny,” Richwood Gazette, June 22, 1951.

  44. I am grateful to Robert Weis for calling this to my attention.

  45. Pilcher, ¡Qué Vivan los Tamales! 38.

  46. Ibid., 77–81.

  47. Robert Weis, “Por la verdad del Osito Bimbo: Consumo en el Mexico contemporáneo” (master’s thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 2001).

  48. Pilcher, ¡Qué Vivan los Tamales!

  49. Steven A. Breth, Principales corrientes de la investigación en el CIM-MYT: Una retrospectiva (Mexico D.F.: CIMMYT, 1986); Ramón Fernández y Fernández, El trigo en Mexico (Mexico D.F.: Banco Nacional de Crédito Agrícola, 1939).

  50. Fernández y Fernández, El trigo en Mexico, 206.

  51. Quoted in Enrique Ochoa, Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food since 1910 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 92.

  52. My account of the Rockefeller Foundation’s work in Mexico is drawn from Jonathan Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding and the Early Years of the Green Revolution in Mexico,” Agricultural History 83, no. 3 (2009): 384–410; John H. Perkins, “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution, 1941–1956,” Agriculture and Human Values 7, no. 3 (1990): 6–18; Breth, Principales corrientes de la investigación en el CIMMYT; Joseph Cotter, Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Deborah Fitzgerald, “Exporting American Agriculture: The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943–53,” Social Studies of Science 16, no. 3 (1986): 457–83; Alicia Maria González, “ ‘El Pan de Cada Día’: The Symbols and Expressive Culture of Wheat Bread in Greater Mexico” (PhD diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1986); Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara, Modernizing Mexican Agriculture: Socioeconomic Implications of Technological Change, 1940–1970 (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1976); Luisa Paré, El Plan Puebla: Una revolución verde que está muy verde (Mexico D.F.: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1970); Andrew Chernocke Pearse, Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want: Social and Economic Implications of the Green Revolution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1980); John H. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Pilcher, ¡Qué Vivan los Tamales!; Edwin J. Wellhausen, “The Agriculture of Mexico,” Scientific American 235, no. 3 (1976): 129–50; Angus Wright, The Death of Ramón González: The Modern Agricultural Dilemna (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).

  53. These advances were impressive but limited. By the 1970s, for reasons discussed below, Mexico once again had to import wheat to meet its needs. For a more complete discussion, see Ochoa, Feeding Mexico.

  54. Silvia Cherem,
Al grano: Vida y visión de los fundadores de Bimbo (Mexico D.F.: Khalida, 2008), 67.

  55. Ibid.; González, “ ‘El Pan de Cada Día,’ ” 96.

  56. Oscar Lewis, Tepoztlán, Village in Mexico (New York: Holt, 1960), 11.

  57. Aase Lionaes, “Award Ceremony Speech for Norman Borlaug,” December 10, 1970, Oslo, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/press.html.

  58. On the economic policies of the Mexican Miracle, see Héctor Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: Contemporary Mexican History, 1910–1989 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Kevin J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and Jaime Ros, Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy: A Historical Perspective (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  59. Michael Lipton and Richard Longhurst, New Seeds and Poor People (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

  60. Perkins, “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution,” 6.

  61. Aguilar Camín and Meyer, In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution; Werner Baer, “Import Substitution and Industrialization in Latin America: Experiences and Interpretations,” Latin American Research Review 7, no. 1 (1972): 95–122; Fitzgerald, “Exporting American Agriculture”; Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding”; Ochoa, Feeding Mexico; Paré, El Plan Puebla; Perkins, “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution.”

  62. Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding”; Paré, El Plan Puebla.

  63. Lipton and Longhurst, New Seeds and Poor People, 3; Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics (London: Zed Books, 1991).