White bread and what would great-grandma eat?

Indeed, food politics in the 20s and 30s in America were distinguished by heated debates over what bread the country should eat. Legions of food reformers, social workers, public-health officials, advertising executives, and an astonishing number of diet gurus worked frantically to convince Americans that choosing the wrong bread would lead to serious problems. Some pinpointed newfangled loaves as the source of cancer, diabetes, criminal delinquency, tuberculosis, kidney failure, overstimulated nervous systems, and even "white race suicide." Others heralded modern bread as a savior, delivering the nation from drudgery, hunger, and dangerous contagions carried by unscientific bread. But they could all agree on one thing: Incorrect food choices were the root cause of nearly all of the nation's moral, physical, and social problems. . . .

Small immigrant-run bakeries came under intense scrutiny, with sanitary inspectors and women's groups painting pictures of dank, vermin-infested cellar workrooms where sewage dripped into dough-mixing troughs and whole families slept on rag piles next to ovens. Newspaper headlines warned "Bakeshops Menace Health" and cautioned against eating "Disease-Breeding Bread."

Even that sentimental icon of all that is good—"Mother's bread"—was denounced under the banner of a safe and efficient diet. Scientific American, women's magazines, and home-economics textbooks portrayed careless home baking as a threat to family health, while other observers wondered whether even the most careful housewife should bake at all. "The modern baker's oven has a germ-killing power that is far beyond that of a household oven," the Atlanta Constitution warned, and a New Castle, Pa., reporter confirmed that baking factories' "great white ovens ... properly kill the yeast germs." "You and your little oven cannot compete. ... It is scientifically proven that home baking is a mistake from every standpoint."