the cooking show I’m watching is rated PG-13 for language and nudity
no it’s not cutthroat kitchen or gordon ramsey it’s a documentary exploring the anthropological & historical significance of cooking, and the dangers of the mass industrialization of food.
and i misspoke it’s rated TV-14 (for language and nudity)
this guy is so fucking angry about sliced bread (justifiably) that he really came out on camera with this absolute banger of a quote:
“And this is really how capitalism usually works. It creates a problem, and rather than fix the problem, it creates a new business to solve the problem.”
utterly scathing and yes this is from a 60 minute documentary episode dedicated entirely to the subject of Bread
You can’t just not tell us why sliced bread is terrible D8
right ok so technically it’s not sliced bread butindustrial, mass-manufactured bread that is…causing problems. Here’s the theory as the show presents it:
For about ~10,000 years bread was a fucking staple of the human diet. we evolved to eat this food, our bodies, our societies were built on this food, but all of a sudden we’re seeing a rise in gluten sensitivity* (distinct from celiac disease). Aka our bodies are rejecting this food we’ve spent 100 centuries eating. Where is this coming from?
Well, a big part of it is probably that less than 100 years ago corporationschanged the definition of bread.(Like, figuratively and literally, they petitioned the FDA to change the legal definition of bread so they could put in additives.) In fact, industrialization has changed the process and the ingredients used to make bread, to the point manufactured bread is a profoundly different product from what our ancestors knew as bread. Let’s start with:
1) The Process:For thousands of years, humans relied on naturally occurring wild yeast and bacteria found in the air to make (leavened) bread and bread starters (fermented dough used to “start” new loaves. hence the term “sourdough”). you can still do this at home–all it involves is leaving a mixture of water and flour lying around for a few days. notice something missing? that’s right, YEAST. this process of making bread involves yeast–yeast from the air around you–but it doesn’t involve concentrated baker’s yeast. Baker’s yeast refers to various strains of yeast that are added directly to flour & water mixtures as a leavening agent. This allows the bread to rise more quickly and cuts down on the overall production time. Convenient, right?
Now, adding yeast is not automatically a bad thing, and bakers have been doing it for a damn long time in interesting ways (such as using yeast from beer brewing). But lately we’ve taken it to extremes–we’ve gotten too good at creating more and more efficient forms of commercial Baker’s yeast, specifically for industrial use on a mass scale. Manufacturers want bread to rise as fast as possible, because that is how you get more product on the shelves. Making bread in factories now takes asmall fractionof the time it used to.
And why is this a problem? Because it turns out a more traditional “long fermentation process allows bacteria to fully break down the carbohydrates and gluten in bread, making it easier to digest and releasing the nutrients within it, allowing our bodies to more easily absorb them.” [1] This (added to the fact that some commercial breads contain extra added gluten) has the unfortunate result that the product you buy from the grocery store is less digestible and nutritious than the bread human societies traditionally relied upon. Hence the rise of gluten intolerance–the gluten we are eating is simply more difficult to toleratethan gluten in properly fermented bread. (This is the reason many people with gluten sensitivity don’t experience symptoms when eating more traditionally made, longer-fermented sourdough.)
That’s not the only issue though. There’s also:
2) The Ingredients.not just the countless additives, but specifically: the flour. See, a grain of wheat is…incredibly nutritious, honestly. It has almost everything we need to sustain life and health. Civilizations did–and do–rely on bread as a fundamental dietary staple, to the point that you can track political instability with rising wheat prices. It’s essential. Look at this:
In a single grain, the essence of life.
So yeah, wheat is nutritional. We can build bodies and civilizations out of wheat. But it’s also, like…super difficult to access that nutrition. Well, more so than with most foods. If you eat a handful of wheat grains, a spoonful of flour–your body can’t digest that, you get basically nothing out of that (also raw flour isn’t safe to consume, don’t do that). Unlike many crops, wheat relies on being carefully and correctly processed in order for the final product to be as nutritional as possible. As stated above, part of that process is about fermentation. Another part isthe quality of the flour, what it contains and how it has been milled and treated.
And that quality has changed a lot in just a century or two. Take white flour, for instance. White flour has been around for a long fucking time actually, but until the late 19th century it was considered a luxury item, a treat for the very wealthy. White flour was never considered a staple food–until industrialists learned how to manufacture it cheaply.[2] And then it was everywhere. And suddenly, surprise surprise, we started to see a rise in nutrition related illnesses. Because the bran and germ have been stripped away, white flour has only a fraction of the nutritional value of whole grain. But because this gives it a higher shelf life, it was more convenient (and profitable) for manufacturers. So when they learned about the health issues, what did they do? Go back to making healthier flour?
Pshaw. Of course not. No, instead they kept removing nutrients, then artificially adding them back in. And that is how we got enriched flour–flour which is still significantly less nutritious than whole wheat flour. [3] And this is what the previous quote about capitalism was referencing. The food industry created a problem, and rather than undoing the problem, they created a whole new business to “fix” it:
And thus came the mass rise of “enriched” foods.
Eat Wonder Bread! It has as much protein as roast beef! As much calcium as cottage cheese! As much iron as lamb chops! No need to eat real foods, when you can eat highly processed foods instead! Don’t cook your own meals, let trustworthy corporations feed you! Mass-produced factory foods are easy, are healthy! There will be literally no downsides or long-term repercussions to public health & wellness!
So yeah. Much of what we think of as “bread” is chemically and molecularly distinct from traditional bread, and is very different (and less nutritional) than what our ancestors were eating even just a century ago. (On an individual level, I’m not sure how to mitigate this, other than by purchasing the healthiest options available (e.g. whole wheat, sourdough), buying from small bakeries/farmer’s markets, or baking bread at home. Lately there has been a rise of small health-concious brands focusing on traditional fermentation and whole ingredients; some may be available in your area. But ultimately, it’s the entire wider system that needs to change.)
And there you have it! I have never been so incandescently furious about wonder bread. This documentary will do that to you–and will change your whole understanding of modern food. It’s a 4-part netflix series called Cooked (2016), based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name. Most of the info above comes from the third episode, and is accurate to the best of my knowledge (but let me know if I got anything wrong).
*I want to be perfectly clear though, gluten itself is not inherently bad. It’s being demonized in the press on no scientific basis, just to push yet another diet fad. Unless your body has actual issues with gluten (e.g. celiac disease, gluten sensitivity) there are no proven benefits to eating gluten-free. There are, however, benefits to eating less processed, more nutritional (delicious delicious) bread.
Just going to note while the rise in gluten issues is probably related in part to the way bread is processed, the cause of celiac disease was only discovered in 1945 and it was pretty much a death sentence before then.
We’re only around three generations away from that and thus there’s been three generations where people with celiac disease and gluten intolerance have lived to adulthood and had children who have it or carry the genes on to their children.
Imo part of the reason that gluten free caught on as a fad is because it can take up 12 years from symptom onset to get a diagnosis, many of the supposed benefits of gluten free match up with symptoms of celiac disorder and people are exceedingly more likely to be exposed to the fad; which then stops their symptoms because they have a gluten intolerance or celiac disease; then they are to a doctor who can/will diagnose them.
this is an important addition!
I’m so sorry for not being more clear in my original post (I have edited it for clarity), but as far as I can tell the theory I shared above is in regards to the rise of non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which unlike celiac disease is not an autoimmune disorder and does not appear to have a genetic component [1]. In the U.S., non-celiac gluten sensitivity affects up to 7% of the population, while celiac disease affects about 1%. (Celiac disease, like many autoimmune disorders, is also on the rise. I have seen different explanations for this, including overexposure to antibiotics, but it’s not a topic I personally have researched.)
The causes of non-celiac gluten sensitivity are not well-understood, but as discussed above, it is probably quite relevant that modern food contains more gluten in a form that is more difficult to digest than what we were eating a century or so ago.
Also, some people in the notes have pointed out that another contributing factor to the rise in gluten issues may be that the farming industry (in order to maximize yield) has switched to new strains of wheat, and shortened the time it takes to grow them. There may be unintended nutritional consequences as a result of this; I would be interested in learning more!
Wrapping up my WWII rations collection are coupons for the grocery store. While the initial thought would be that this was to make sure food was available for the troops (which in some cases was the fact), the real reasoning went beyond the actual food stuffs. It actually had to do with the processing and delivery. Like I had mentioned in my earlier rations posts, a big driving factor was the use of rubber. Hence limiting the amount of stuff you could buy meant that less stuff would have to be transported = less wear on precious tires. There was also the thought that less tin would be consumed by cans if people couldn’t buy as much. While true, I have read that the tin shortage wasn’t really as bad as the public thought. Either way, the rations did help cutback on cans.
This is by no means all of the paperwork involved with rations. As a matter of fact there was a War Ration Book No. 4 issued later on that I don’t have, and plans for a Book 5 as well. I like how over time the rations became more stylized, as you can see comparing Book 1 stamps with Book 3. (And Book 4 was even more so.) Besides the graphics the other thing I really like is the slogan that was used throughout the war years. “If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT.” Words that I still live by today.
