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Gastropod

White vs. Wheat: The Food Fight of the Centuries

4/21/202653 min

White or whole wheat: while today the question is most frequently asked at the sandwich counter, the debate over the correct answer goes back literally thousands of years. This episode, we dive into the world's longest-running, highest-stakes food fight. Along the way: the invention of sliced bread, the science behind Wonder Bread's curious bounce, and a light dusting of eugenics. Will either win the bread war once and for all? (encore)

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Clips

Showing 10 of 12
Stop Policing People’s Bread
Zero Fiber, Big Consequences
Why White Meant Power
When Food Banks Say No
Whiteness, purity, and flour
Design Brief: Beat White Bread
Commodity Wheat’s Flavor Blindness
Feeding More With Whole Grain
A Wheat Never Meant White
Inside The Approachable Loaf

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Steve Jones· Guest0:02

    I don't like to be in the same room as white flour, and very white pastries and breads creep me out. They look too white, and it's just weird, and it's not natural, and it's odd. And it's odd if you think you're basically making paste that we made as second graders, right? Out of white flour is starch and gluten. It makes a very good paste. I don't get it.

  2. Nicola Twilley· Host0:28

    Okay, me personally, I can't be in the same room as a delicious freshly baked white baguette and not eat it. But to be fair, I have the same problem with a good whole wheat loaf, too.

  3. Cynthia Graber· Host0:40

    I actually do try to stay away from purely white flour bread because I feel like there's something missing in it. I, of course, am Cynthia Graber, and you're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history.

  4. Nicola Twilley· Host0:51

    This episode, it's white versus wheat in the bread smackdown of the century. And I'm Nicola Twilley, lover of bread in all its glorious shades.

  5. Cynthia Graber· Host1:00

    Have we always had both whole wheat and white bread, or is white flour some kind of newfangled technological fancy thing?

  6. Nicola Twilley· Host1:07

    And is industrial white bread like Wonder Bread? Is that even bread? Because how does it get so squidgy and bouncy?

  7. Cynthia Graber· Host1:14

    And does it really matter which one we eat, or is choosing one kind of bread over the other just a kind of snobbery?

  8. Nicola Twilley· Host1:19

    Or worse, eugenics. This is the ultimate food fight, one that has gone on for thousands of years.

  9. Cynthia Graber· Host1:26

    White versus wheat. Let the showdown begin in this encore

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