There Are Many Things Better Than Sliced Bread
"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."
Human teeth aren’t sharp like a coyote’s and we don’t have the python's ability to digest animals whole, so we have devised methods of processing. We harvest and kill, chop and press, boil and fry. Processing, cooking, or otherwise preparing food to the point that it is digestible takes time, knowledge, a place to do it and of course, a supply of food.
Large groups of humans, such as armies or governments, can swallow people whole. We are gulped down as we buy into the marketing that assures us convenience is the most important attribute of food. And, as US citizens deal with our food having additives that have been banned in other countries, we are the lucky ones. In Gaza, people are consumed whole while they’re waiting in a line for aid. In the US, in front of the Israeli embassy, Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in extreme protest of the genocide – preferring to die than to be part of devouring more lives.
He wore a military uniform and his final words were, “My name is Aaron Bushnell. I’m an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
As I worked on this newsletter, news broke that at least 112 Palestinians were killed as they waited in line for food in what’s being called the Flour Massacre. This comes at the same time that the UN warns that at least 576,000 people are “one step away from famine.” There is plenty of food, it’s just being withheld. Food is a tool for control and in Gaza we’re seeing it at its most extreme and evil. Food is also used for control in more discrete ways – in the service of ideas like efficiency and convenience.
I made a loaf of sandwich bread last Tuesday, and then made it again Wednesday after not being satisfied with my first attempt. This isn’t normal for me, I prefer to delegate breadmaking to the experts, but it wasn’t a normal week, in many ways. My kids helped, and they noticed how much more work it was than grabbing the purchased loaf from the counter. They commented on how long it took to make the bread, how many different steps there were, they measured flour and found that it was not the easiest task. My adult control-freak brain kept shouting at me, This is so hard why are you doing this you don’t have time for this look at how much more work it’s making! The second loaf came out so much better (not too sweet because we halved the sugar, and not underbaked like the first try) that it felt like a miracle. We kept marveling at the fact that we made that.
Join me in imagining it’s 1928, the year sliced bread was first sold in the US. Part of my weekly work has always been making (or bartering for) all the bread my family eats. I grew up watching (and helping) my mother make all the bread our family ate. I’ve spent countless hours making bread and I’m exhausted. Learning that I can sometimes buy my family a loaf of bread instead is a literal miracle. It opens up opportunities to do other things with my time. I feel modern and efficient buying bread, my hands not sticky with dough. Everywhere I look, I’m reminded that I’m experiencing “The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.”
Back in 2024, I’m re-reading Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Sidney Mintz. He reminds me to question what is considered self-evident, like the goodness of store bought bread. “One cannot simply assume that everyone has an infinite desire for sweetness, any more than one can assume the same about a desire for comfort or wealth or power.” Was moving the processing of bread from the home to the factory (where it became ultra-processed) a good thing? Who, exactly, was it good for? The food industry assumes that sliced bread is capital-G Good and will go to any lengths, at the expense of people’s health and the environment, to keep pumping it out.
I read this week’s issue of Dense Discovery by Kai Brach about ultra-processed foods, defined by Wikipedia as “an industrially formulated edible substance derived from natural food or synthesised from other organic compounds. The resulting products are designed to be highly profitable, convenient, and hyperpalatable.” Brach wrote about Chris van Tulleken who calls diet-related diseases “‘commerciogenic’ – driven by profit incentives, just like tobacco.” I watched half of the talk linked in Dense Discovery, and something van Tulleken said really struck me: “The brain is a prediction engine. It’s constantly making predictions about the world. And when you get a mismatch between a prediction – like sugar is on its way and the sugar doesn’t arrive – there may be a stress response.” He was talking about blood glucose levels, but it made me think about bread, and, more broadly, about living within a society that doesn’t listen to you unless you’re part of the ruling class.
If my brain is used to seeing endless aisles of bread for sale, contending with the reality of making bread (more time) or buying handmade bread (more money) can produce a stress response. If my brain believes my country will listen to me if I call my representatives, if I’m a “good” citizen, and then it doesn’t, that’s a huge mismatch. This language gives me some explanation of the feelings of horror, anger, and abandonment I’ve been cycling through since 2016, and even more intensely since October 7. Admitting that I ever believed that the government would help me betrays the fact that I’m white, straight, and cis-gender, and from a family familiar with military time. I’ve always had the touch of suspicion in me, though, thanks to my and my Mom’s experiences of sexism and her being raised in a union family, but like the young person I was, I hoped for better.
The movement of breadmaking from home to factory wasn’t a natural progression that everyone demanded, nor was it an accident. It was a combination of domestic reformers who wanted to erase the kitchen (for those who could afford it) and the boom of commerce and industry. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro is another book I’m re-reading, and it shows that the women who wanted to change how cooking was done, while some were worried about food safety and poverty, primarily wanted a place in the ruling class, if they didn’t have one already. As it became simpler and cheaper to buy bread, the public was always told it was just as healthy as homemade. And perhaps that was true at the beginning.
But it’s not true anymore that the bread for sale at the grocery store is as healthy as the bread you make at home or buy from an indie bakery. Because the bread made in factories today isn’t just a processed food that is being made outside the home to make my life easier, it’s an ultra-processed food and it’s not truly good for anyone beside the people profiting off it. This has been true since the 1960s when a new method for mass bread making was introduced by researchers at the British Baking Industries Research Association at Chorleywood. From an article in The Independent from 2006, “The flour and yeast were changed and a combination of intense energy and additives completely displaced time in the maturing of dough. Almost all our bread has been made this way for nearly half a century. It is white and light and stays soft for days.” If it’s bread for sale in the US, its ingredient list may contain additives such as potassium bromate that have been banned in the UK since 1990 and India since 2016 for being linked to cancer in rodents.
In the US, abundance is assumed to be an unquestioned good. If the government, a company, or a person says it is doing X to provide abundance for the people then they are given a free pass. Sliced bread is possible (even expected), but not a livable wage, affordable food, or time to cook. Here’s all the sliced bread you could ever want, but the killing of Palestinians continues. Abundance isn't the right word anymore. Mass produced, extractive over-abundance. Super-abundance. Maximum excess. Abundancide — the destruction of people for abundance for a small group of people. This is tied up with the mythology of this country being the land of plenty. But for whom? And on what terms?
I’m trying to bring more food processing back into my home (without turning down the scary road of the trad wife making homemade Fruit Loops.) At the same time, using my writing to normalize the labor, time, knowledge, and energy it takes to cook, and advocate for more people having what they need to do it. And, always, looking closely at what gets in the way of this for so many: lack of a stable place to live, lack of food, lack of time and money. And then questioning why the society I live in (and others that are sometimes called “developed”) is built on assuming that ease and comfort are most important, while so many more people are sick, anxious and depressed, or dying young. Cooking isn’t work that gets in the way of more important things (like chasing prestige and money), cooking is the important work: feeding myself, my family, and my community.
Aaron Bushnell’s words have been in my head since I read them, and they will remain, along with the specter of the woman who self-immolated (and survived) in Atlanta in December but was effectively erased from the media. Joshua P. Hill’s newsletter is worth reading for more about the acts of protest and what to do to organize for Palestine. The words Aaron Bushnell chose were deliberate, and he knew the heft they would carry coming from a white man in a military uniform. It’s part of the dysfunction of the white-supremist, patriarchal world that his words would be heard by more people. I hope his words haunt all of us, as they are haunting me.
To talk about myself making bread and the Palestinians killed while waiting for flour in the same essay is meant to bring the horror close. I’m struggling with the ending today, because there is no end. The US produces enough food to feed every single person living in the country, and yet many are hungry. People across the world go without basic rights, while others have an extreme overabundance. People in Gaza are being starved and as they wait in line for food, they are attacked and some are killed.
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
Take action:
(I’m borrowing this list of links from Joshua P. Hill’s newsletter)
Support Palestine Action: https://www.palestineaction.org/
Dissent against the War Machine: https://wearedissenters.org/
Apply pressure for a ceasefire now: https://ceasefiretoday.com/
Take action with Jewish Voice for Peace: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
Take action with the Palestinian Youth Movement: palestinianyouthmovement.com/
Take action with IfNotNow: https://www.ifnotnowmovement.org/
Support Boycots, Divestmest, and Sanctions: https://bdsmovement.net/
Find a protest to attend: https://www.gazaispalestine.com/take-action
The Good Enough Weekly comes out every Friday, alternating an essay (like today) with Of the Week. This time last year I wrote: “We can buy the flowers ourself + GRID opening in Phx.” I also take on freelance editing and writing projects. Reach out if you’re looking for help in those departments — I’ve worked on everything from zines to textbooks. More info here.
Wow, thank you for writing this.
Girl. This. 🖤