White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain
The history of white bread is more important than we think. I will be reviewing the book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf written by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. This book is about how white bread historical impacted the food production during the industrial revolution. Bobrow- Strain main argument is that the industrial revolution has changed the way food is produced and consumed. The main focus of the was on the production of white bread and how it has changed over time. Also, he look at the changes in the society and how that changed the production of white bread. He starts of being explaining bread was made in the homes, then bakeries, then
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For example, at first he said that higher class of people would eat white bread and then it changed to a poor class of people eat white bread. To prove his argument the author uses a collective of history about white bread. I think the authors wrote this book to try to education people on the history of food in North America. This book benefits the course by giving the course a very clear and real life example of how one food item to impact food production. This book also, shows us how changes to our food could be potentially harming us. The information in this book can relate to field of sociology because, white bread effect an entire society and Bobrow – Strain discussed the aspect that white bread on class, race, gender roles and culture. This book can intersect with global food politics and globalization …show more content…
Also, I would have prefer if the author wrote the historical aspects in chronological, that would have made it a bit easier to kept up with all the historical periods. I feel that this book has given me a better understand of why food production systems had changed. For instance, from what I understand our food production has changed because, people were too busy to prepared food and depended on companies to make consumption easier for the people. I thought it was a present day issue but, after reading this book I now understand it has been an issue for a long period of time. Bobrow – Strain even say that “ convenience is an easy answer and certainly part of the historical explanation (36). Overall this book was an easy read and covers everything so that someone without knowledge of white bread and food could understand the
Book three of the novel “Bread Givers,” written by Anzia Yezierska is set in New York. The story revolves around Sara Smolinsky, her family and the struggles they face in their daily lives. The main conflict in book three is Sara’s guilt for leaving her family and pursuing her career without seeing them for six years. For example, when she comes back to see her family, she realizes she is too late. Her mother is dying. Sara feels horrible that she didn’t come to see her mother and spend more time with her. She knows that she should’ve come to see her mother instead of investing so much time with school. Then, her mother dies a couple days later. She decides to stay and visit her father, Reb Smolinsky, often but doesn’t visit him after he gets married again only thirty days after her mother died. A couple months later, she sees Reb again but he’s working. She feels guilty for not supporting him and giving him money in his time of need. To see him working to get money for his greedy wife made her feel terrible. In the end, Reb can’t stand being in the same house as his wife and decides he wants to leave. He doesn’t know where to so Sara decides to take him in and let
...pened my eyes to the health risks of the food I consume. There is a lot of health risks associated with the foods on the shelves at the supermarket. A food product I ate as a child was Lunchables. At the time I just thought the food was good. Although, now that I am aware of what I put in my body I try to look at the ingredient and the food products I consume before I consume them. The book also informed me of the deceitfulness of people in order to make a profit. A prime example in Chapter eleven is the Kraft Company. The Kraft Company state they want to decrease the amounts of salt, sugar and fat in their products. On the other hand, Kraft creates new products with an increased amount of these ingredients. Many companies state that they try to fulfill the desires of consumers. This idea is wrong. The consumers study what our body craves and uses it against us.
...r’s intended result was to show that the forces of industry capitalists would drive the working class to Socialism. Jack London, famous Socialist, commented, “What ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ did for the black slaves ‘The Jungle’ has a large chance to do for the white slaves of today.” By demonizing American industry he hoped to change the world. There are only a dozen or so pages concerned with the horrid details of meat production, but it was these informal references to the food they were buying and eating that angered the people and created public demand for reform.
The Whole Earth Catalog is yellowing and brittle. Its publishers, the Portola Institute, probably didn't expect back in 1969 that the they would show up on university library shelves, and so they didn't bother with acid-free paper. When I flip through the pages I remember the day I bought a copy myself, a later edition, at least, in 1975 and, reading, through it, came upon a recipe for baking bread, from the Tassajara Bread Book. It was summer. Breaking bread sounded like a righteous thing for a college freshman to do and so in my mother's kitchen I measure yeast and molasses and water and whole wheat and salt and oil and kneaded out six loaves.
Food culture all around the world changes and adapts in accordance to how humans evolve their tastes. In “End of Ethnic” by John Birdstall, he informs us of his point of view on what ethnic food is, and what we as Americans think of it. In addition, Kate Murphy’s “First Camera than Fork” talks about the positive and negative aspects of the “Foodie” world on the internet. Modern American food is an open book, full of different ethnic creations, and eye candy. This definition is proven through both Birdstall’s examples that define ethnic food as well as Murphy’s examples revealing how the food culture turns all their meals into a photographic diary.
Section 1: Typically, we need a well-balanced meal to give us the energy to do day-to-day tasks and sometimes we aren’t able to get home cooked meals that are healthy and nutritious on a daily basis, due to the reasons of perhaps low income or your mom not being able to have the time to cook. People rely on fast food, because it’s quicker and always very convenient for full-time workers or anyone in general who just want a quick meal. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation argues that Americans should change their nutritional behaviors. In his book, Schlosser inspects the social and economic penalties of the processes of one specific section of the American food system: the fast food industry. Schlosser details the stages of the fast food production process, like the farms, the slaughterhouse and processing plant, and the fast food franchise itself. Schlosser uses his skill as a journalist to bring together appropriate historical developments and trends, illustrative statistics, and telling stories about the lives of industry participants. Schlosser is troubled by our nation’s fast-food habit and the reasons Schlosser sees fast food as a national plague have more to do with the pure presence of the stuff — the way it has penetrated almost every feature of our culture, altering “not only the American food, but also our landscape, economy, staff, and popular culture. This book is about fast food, the values it represents, and the world it has made," writes Eric Schlosser in the introduction of his book. His argument against fast food is based on the evidence that "the real price never appears on the menu." The "real price," according to Schlosser, varieties from destroying small business, scattering pathogenic germs, abusing wor...
...e has a very sensitive and personable narrative throughout the book that transcends to showing how caring of a person she is. That aspect, who the writer is, is very important to me especially when discussing such important topics that needs to be coming from someone I trust and believe in. Since food and eating habits is something that every human all has in common it is a very good book that is able to affect anyone on a personal level. For me it has drawn an even further connection to the things I have learned in this course. My family has always been health conscious because my mother has been having health problems for 20 years so the importance of health and exercise is something that I have been raised with. With textual evidence the class and this book has presented to me I am very confident in my health habits and choices today and for the rest of my life.
At the fist half of the book Sinclair narrated what has become the meatpacking legacy by telling the detail of diseased meat shoveled off the dirty floor into sausage grinder and injured people preparing meat. The other half showed how Jurgis Ruckus, lost his house and family, strike out on his own, nearly starving on the street, unable to find work. There were many immigrants during the twentieth century who came into America at that time so that employers could offer wages for unskilled workers who are willing to do miserable jobs like working in the meat packing industry.
Bread Story, is a reading from Michael Parenti, that tells about the story of father that took the business bread of his brother in the year 1956. It was a really soft and popular bread that the people in town was happy to buy. Years after, the production of the bread started to increase when the supermarkets and groceries started to placing orders with them. But not everything was going as expected, months after, a big company called Wonder Bread, went into a special line giving a free introductory of two hundred loaves. After it, the father of the guy wanted to avoid that his company break down and he decided to develop a certain trick. He was making less loaves and selling it for more money. The son of the company owner decided to go to
The interviewee that was questioned helped to collect and understand information with regards to food culture and food consumption based on changes through time. I interviewed a woman who lives near me who is in her early 60s who has lived in Canada her full life. Examining someone who has lived in Canada her full life was interesting because I was able to compare how food production and consumption has changed so much. Through looking at my interviewees food habits of when she was younger through up until now linking it to the concepts learned in class it helps to understand the ever-changing food culture. Alternative food movements are needed to help provide people with better choices because industrialized food and production
In this second to last section, we learn that our decisions about how we want our food produced and delivered count towards social virtue. Emile Durkheim’s The Division of Labor in Society is one of the founding texts of modern social theory, and draws a distinction between what Durkheim called mechanical and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity is largely a premodern form while organic solidarity flows from the division of labor. In organic solidarity according to Durkheim, individuals depend on one another for various tasks. However, in mechanical solidarity, people are independent but they are also aware of what each person is doing. They all have a different task that they are completing in order to survive. In these, societies you did not need to know who grew the food that was on your plate or for that matter who made your plate (435). This is Shapin’s most convincing argument in the whole essay, the logos he uses is very well done. The evidence behind his argument is well defined and thought out. His use of Emile Durkheim’s text in his argument of the morals in food helps bring the argument together. This brings us to the final most convincing argument in the entire
Capitalism underwent a severe attack at the hands of Upton Sinclair in this novel. By showing the misery that capitalism brought the immigrants through working conditions, living conditions, social conditions, and the overall impossibility to thrive in this new world, Sinclair opened the door for what he believed was the solution: socialism. With the details of the meatpacking industry, the government investigated and the public cried out in disgust and anger. The novel was responsible for the passage of The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. With the impact that Sinclair must have known this book would have, it is interesting that he also apparently tried to make it fuction as propaganda against capitalism and pro-socialism.
Businesses did whatever they could do to food to produce as much of it as cheaply as possible, adding chemicals to make it taste or look better. Sinclair described how every part of the animal was used, saying that companies used “everything of the pig except the squeal.” This included using the rotten meats, selling them to the public as “Number Three Grade” meats.10 Those who were unfortunate enough to eat the meat were poisoned, including one of the immigrant children in the novel, Kristoforas, who died from a poisoned sausage. Sausage was probably the most dangerous of the meats, because they were the moldy cuts Europe had sold to America, because no one there wanted them, and they were “doused with borax and glycerine” to remove any odor or foul taste. The meats would be in piles on the floor where the dirt laid, the roof leaked, the workers spit, and the rats crawled.12 Workers put poisoned bread by the meat piles to kill off the rats, so in the pile there were the dead rats and their dung.12 All of this including the poisoned bread would become part of the sausages. Not only were the meats bad, but the other foods the immigrant family would buy were doctored with chemicals. Sinclair described the pale-blue milk the immigrant family bought was watered down and was "doctored with formaldehyde,” and that other foods such as tea, coffee, sugar and flour had also been altered. The canned peas they
In Michael Pollan’s “The End of Cooking” shares the message of what we are losing something important in this day and age because of all our pre-made and processed foods. This can be compared with Kothari’s “If You Are What You Eat, What Am I?” and her argument that food is part of one’s own identity. By using the examples from these two texts you can analyze the state of food and culture in the United States today. All of the processed and pre-made foods are causing people all across America to lose their sense of Culture. We no longer know what it’s like to make one of our cultures specialty dishes from scratch which can help people identify with their culture. This process helped newer generations see what it was like for those before them to cook on a daily basis and could help them identify your sense of culture.
Throughout the Bible, bread was of great importance. It was a source of food, a currency of exchange, an example of hospitality, and even a gift from God. Because bread was of such great importance in the Israelites lives, it became a term that represented the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus became known as the “Bread of Life.” This paper will go into more depth about the importance of bread and the “Bread of Life.”