White vs. Wheat: The Food Fight of the Centuries

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Arts, History, Food

4.7 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

White or whole wheat: while today the question is most frequently asked at the sandwich counter, the debate over the correct answer goes back literally thousands of years. In the past century, though, as white flour and thus white bread became more accessible, the debate became increasingly heated: "Science finds that white bread develops criminals,” reported newspapers in the 1920s, while anti-white bread activists at the time claimed that eating too many slices would causing blindness and facial deformity. But whole-wheat bashers had their retorts ready: "Whiteness and purity go hand in hand," proclaimed health writer Dr. Woods Hutchinson. "The whitest possible of white bread" is "not only much more appetizing, but ... more nutritious and more wholesome than any black, brown or brindled staff of life." White vs. wholewheat: this episode, we dive into the world's longest-running, highest-stakes food fight. Along the way: the invention of sliced bread, the science behind Wonder Bread's curious bounce, and a light dusting of eugenics. Listen in now as Aaron Bobrow-Strain, author of White Bread: A Social History of the Store-bought Loaf, unpacks the anxieties and values underlying the bread wars, while wheat breeder Steve Jones introduces us to the "approachable" loaf that he hopes will win the battle for once and for all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:21.3	I don't like to be in the same room as white flour and very white pastries and reds creep me out.
0:33.3	They look too white.
0:35.3	It's just weird and it's not natural and it's odd.
0:39.3	And it's odd if you think you're basically making paste that we made a second grader right out of white flour is starch and gluten.
0:47.3	It makes a very good paste.
0:49.3	I don't get it.
0:51.3	Okay, me personally, I can't be in the same room as a delicious freshly baked white baguette and not eat it.
0:59.3	But to be fair, I have the same problem with the good whole wheat loaf too.
1:02.3	I actually do try to stay away from purely white flour bread because I feel like there's something missing in it.
1:08.3	I of course, M Cynthia Graber and you're listening to GastroBud, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history.
1:14.3	In the episode, it's white versus wheat in the bread smack down of the century.
1:19.3	And I'm Nicola Twilly, lover of bread in all its glorious shades.
1:23.3	Have we always had both whole wheat and white bread or is white flour some kind of newfangled technological fancy thing?
1:29.3	And is industrial white bread like wonder bread?
1:32.3	Is that even bread?
1:33.3	Because how does it get so squidgy and bouncy?
1:36.3	And does it really matter which one we eat or is choosing one kind of bread over the other just a kind of snobbery?
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