White Bread Sociology

The study of one food item illuminates the reproduction of social inequality. One food item, such as white bread, has been used to created distinctions within one’s identity, social location, gender, race, and class. White bread introduces the ideas of gender, race, and class by distinguishing good, bad, proper, and non proper eating habits. Such distinctions relate to food preparation such as bento boxes in Japan and eating and food stigmas such as eating disorder within the male gender.

Gender serves as one distinction of the social consequences of white bread. White bread is considered a food that one consumes, however the way in which one consumes it and how much they consume it at a young age directly relates to a mother’s choice of what

brand she buys and how much she puts on your plate. Socially, a mother is responsible for her children’s food consumption. As a result, a social pressure is placed on a mother to provide the best means of food, in this case, bread, possible.

Thus, the food that the mother provides must be of the utmost clean and healthy status. When white bread was first introduced it was necessary to have it in your household because, “To eat white bread was to participate in the process of building a better nation,” (white bread 64). Therefore, mothers felt the social pressure to have it in their households to show that they care about their children, their nation, and their children’s wellbeing. However, once the discovery that white bread was less hygienic than bread that was homemade or from a bakery the need for unprocessed bread within the household grew. “As Mother’s Magazine warned, children’s “bread must be thoroughly cooked, for if the yeast spores escape the heat, as soon as they come into contact with the stomach they grow and produce fermentation” (43). The ideology surrounding eating hygienic food grew and the responsibility for a mother to provide such high caliber bread for her child/children rose as well. Similarly to white bread, a bento box is also seen as a distinction of a good and caring mother. Spending hours on making, cooking, and constructing a bento box is a social responsibility of a Japanese mother. The number of hours a mother spends

on creating her child’s bento box and how well put together / how distinguishable the box is defines how much she loves her child. If the bento box is simple, lacks ingredients, and does not look well put together it is concluded that the mother does not care about societal norms, does not care about her child, and is therefore a bad mother. In fact, when a mother performed poorly they were, “reprimanded by a teach for insufficient devotion to their child” (Japanese Mothers and Obentos 165). This social construct pressures Japanese mothers into waking up hours prior to their child’s school to create elaborate lunches for them everyday. As a result this, “reproduce(s) state ideologies of power,” within the Japanese culture (Food and Culture 154). Therefore, ideologies surrounding gender, females, provided social pressures for a mother to provide hygienic and elaborate food for her children to show she cared about their wellbeing both in the case of white bread and in the Japanese bento boxes.
Gender also plays a role in the history of white bread when it relates to boy culture. Boy culture is seen as masculine and defined. Consequently a man’s consumption materializes to the forefront of the social construct of food consumption. For instance, during multiple wars the fact that bread and water were what was consumed during battle was a reality. The men who were fighting in the wars and battles were known as resilient and strong. Men of bravery, the idealistic qualities of a man because, “Boy culture emphasized toughness, bravery, and aggression” (white bread 127). Hence, men who were not at battle felt the pressure to consume the same way men who were at battle did to show that they too can be tough and resilient, expect in this case when it came to diet. To show they too were hardcore they turned their kitchen into their battle field and consumed what a soldier would. Which was little to nothing, however the quality of strictness and perseverance to maintain such strictness was a quality that these men portrayed. Thus these men felt comfortable with their manhood within society. In addition to the strictness surrounding bread consumption , the way in which a man’s body was built also affected the way in which society interpreted them. Wonder released an ad that stated it, “Builds a Body 8 ways,” stating that it can help to make a body stronger and more toned (white bread 127). Qualities that a man feels he needs to have. Accordingly, the pressures for a man to look a certain way continued. As bread developed in different ways the interpretation of how a man was to look stayed virtually the same. This caused a rise in eating disorders within the male community. Similarly, to white bread consumption for muscle being a male dominant trait an eating disorder is one seen to be strictly female, however this is not true. Gentrifying eating disorders is not a logical social pressure due to the pressures a man feels to look a certain way, the same pressures a female feels. Although the media depicts an eating disorder to be female, men oppose this gender stigma through strict diets and overexercising to be fit and strong with abnormally large muscles. Men restrict their intake to a very strict diet in order to obtain the manly and chiseled body they feel they need to have. This ideology surrounding what body a man is supposed to look like stems from the social pressure for a man to be extremely strong and tough. This ideology causes harmful thoughts within a man's mind that manifest into an eating disorder. Gender is attached to food consumption within the bounds of males and females alike. The way in which wonder bread stated they could build a body and the way in which a male restricts his intake to shows how food consumed is linked to gender due to societal pressures.
In addition to gender, a social pressure that is introduced from the idea of white bread is race and the role that race plays within society.

The color of the bread itself is a distinction of race. It is believed that, “white is a moral color,” therefore it was believed to be moral to consume white bread (white bread 64). In addition, “White bread had long stood as a symbol of wealth and status - and in America, racial purity,” once again constructing societal pressures within races (white bread 64). If you were not white you were not believed to be as racially pure as those who were white. For this reason, white bread, “didn’t appear to be a matter merely of taste or culinary preference,” but as a racial distinction (white bread 64). The color white was a way to force, “immigrants to adopt higher standards of cleanliness” (white bread 65). If it was white than it was clean. A racial stigma is present within this idea because the idea that anything but white is not clean. Therefore, the color of an immigrants skin that is not white is perceived as dirty. White bread is clean and therefore preferred, if you didn’t eat bread that was white you were considered dirty among society, which introduces the idea of classes within society, the last

stigma.
Who consumes the white bread reveals what class they are from due to the social distinctions surrounding the bread. When white bread was first introduced to the palate of Americans it was introduced and understood as something one who was wealthy obtained because it was new and delicious. However, as it developed and was found to be processed and bad for you it was transformed from a need to a disgust. White bread was no longer bouje , but rather disgusting. David Mamet introduced the insult, “You’re scum, you’re fucking white bread,” which confirms the transformation of white bread and how it now can insinuate the class one is apart of (White Bread 163). “By the early 1980s, however, another usage had emerged. In this case, “white bread” signified: not bland, affluent suburbia, but white trash” (white bread 165). Counterculture dreams were transformed from building a good society and community to now using food as a way to dig at others class status, “through a complex play of cultural subversions, rebellious aesthetics, rituals of social status, and protests against mass consumption” (white bread 165). As a result the actual consumption of white bread, “may also serve as an edible emblem of class solidarity” (white bread 188). Through class status and the consumption of white bread one’s class and status can be defined and revealed.
Through the study of one food item, white bread, different societal distinctions such as gender, class, and race and their roles in societal pressures are present. These societal pressures shed light on the history and development of the ideologies surrounding white bread and how America as a whole can negatively influence a class, gender, or race as a whole. As a result one’s identity can be altered, shifted, and judged.