<
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/mar/20/britains-bitter-bread-battle-what-a-5-sourdough-loaf-tells-us-about-health-wealth-and-class>
"The cheapest loaf in my nearest supermarket costs 45p. The cheapest loaf in my
local artisanal bakery costs £5. Which of these facts winds you up?
For Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of
Cambridge, it is the £5 sourdough. Writing in the
Guardian this month, he
railed against “bougie” bakeries charging more for “fancy” bread. For Chris
Young, the coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign, it is the 45p white sliced.
In response to Yeo’s article, he pointed out that ultra-processing enables
supermarkets to sell bread so cheaply.
This was just one recent spat in Britain’s long-running bread wars. It prompts
two questions: how can something that requires only four ingredients – flour,
water, yeast and salt – diverge so wildly on price? And how did our most basic
foodstuff become so divisive?
Pen Vogler, the author of
Stuffed, says it is precisely because bread is
fundamental to our diets. “For good or ill, we have decided, on our rain-soaked
island, that wheat bread is our staple,” she says. “Bread has been divisive
from our earliest records.”
Like so many things, it is tied up with class. In her previous book,
Scoff,
Vogler wrote: “Ideas of social status and the colour of your bread go back to
Roman times … the lord’s bread was snowy white and it was up to the rest of the
household to ‘know the colour of their bread’ and therefore their place.” It
took time – and money – to produce white flour. “The culture wars were always
about white bread versus brown,” says Vogler."
Via Khurram Wadee and Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
