This is a pretty comprehensive rundown: https://www.tastingtable.com/1031127/the-complete-history-of-sliced-bread/

Just like cereal
Women went to work
Large families cheaper easy products

I buy bread at the Whole Foods bakery: the bread there is good quality, in that it doesn't have too many additives and a lot of their offerings have Red Fife or whole wheat flour, which is healthier. I read the ingredients list, because some of their breads still have too much salt or sugar. Their prepackaged sandwich bread is full of crap like all supermarkets.

When put in the fridge, even bakery bread lasts for a week.

Anonymous wrote:Agree with OP.

+1

You can put bread in the fridge to make it keep longer

You can also put a damp paper towel around stale bread and.microwave it for about 10-15 seconds. NBD.

Anonymous wrote:Many things in the US are driven by corporate profits rather than by quality or health benefits. “Bread” is cheap — relative to actual bread, and has a long shelf life. Many Americans have rarely —if ever— tasted actual bread (with zero corn syrup or stabilizers) and don’t really know what they’re missing. Wonder Bread, for example, has been around since about 1920.
When I lived in NYC, I bought bread from neighborhood shops and bakeries. It was delicious. It also got stale quickly. Shopping for bread every day or so plus making copious amounts of French toast, stuffing, and bread pudding with the leftovers won’t really work for most households.

This. In the US most people shop once per week, and bread goes stale if it doesn’t have preservatives. I love fresh bakery bread, but I don’t have time to shop at the bakery every day.

Anonymous wrote:Many things in the US are driven by corporate profits rather than by quality or health benefits. “Bread” is cheap — relative to actual bread, and has a long shelf life. Many Americans have rarely —if ever— tasted actual bread (with zero corn syrup or stabilizers) and don’t really know what they’re missing. Wonder Bread, for example, has been around since about 1920.
When I lived in NYC, I bought bread from neighborhood shops and bakeries. It was delicious. It also got stale quickly. Shopping for bread every day or so plus making copious amounts of French toast, stuffing, and bread pudding with the leftovers won’t really work for most households.

Yeah, I don’t eat grocery store bread and making homemade doesn’t work for me because it goes stale too fast.

So I make yogurt/flour flatbread.

I literally won’t walk down the bread aisle at the store because I hate the smell. I assume it’s the preservatives.

Yeah, I don’t eat that crap and never really have.

Many things in the US are driven by corporate profits rather than by quality or health benefits. “Bread” is cheap — relative to actual bread, and has a long shelf life. Many Americans have rarely —if ever— tasted actual bread (with zero corn syrup or stabilizers) and don’t really know what they’re missing. Wonder Bread, for example, has been around since about 1920.
When I lived in NYC, I bought bread from neighborhood shops and bakeries. It was delicious. It also got stale quickly. Shopping for bread every day or so plus making copious amounts of French toast, stuffing, and bread pudding with the leftovers won’t really work for most households.

There are documentaries about it on youtube. Worse than people buying it is that it's allowed to be sold as food. I'd be in pain on the floor eating that bread.

Industry lobbying and zoning. When you live far from grocery stores and dont have time to bake your own, you but the stuff that lasts forever. And we dont have govt regulation preventing all the corn syrup and palm oil in products shelf stability. Local bakeries cannot compete with industrial bakeries because of this. France regulars what is allows to be called a baguette etc. Japan drastically limits food coloring and additives in food.

Yes, the salt content in US mass produced breads is crazy. Only two slices of commercial Italian white bread (basically just a sandwich) has almost 20% of your ENTIRE dv for sodium. It's crazy how much salt they have.

Agree with OP.

Yes, it's horrible. Industrial bread products have so much sugar, which isn't great as a third of the US population has pre-diabetes without knowing it. Also hidden salt, which is bad for those with high blood pressure. They add extra gluten to make the bread rise quicker for more profits, which increases reactions to gluten in the population.

How in the world did the typical mass produced loaves of white, Italian, potato etc bread become the de facto "bread" in US households? I put bread in quotes because it really isn't bread, but nasty sugar/high fructose corn syrup that's baked and passed off as bread. You know back in the old days Americans probably used to consume real bread compared to the highly processed monstrosities many homes consume these days. Yes, we all know there are local bakeries etc making proper bread, but the vast majority of American homes don't buy that regularly - they're all buying crap like wonder bread, garbage Italian bread like Arnold's, etc. It's really kinda sad the garbage that Americans will put into their bodies on a regular basis. American breads are so, sooooo nasty. How simps consume this stuff?