Matthew Gates 3m 728 #bread
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
“Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.” – James A. Garfield
Once upon a time, bread did not exist. Sliced bread was invented on July 7 1928. Some of our grandparents are older than sliced bread. This does not mean bread itself did not exist. Flour and yeast and water were the simple recipes that kept most of our great grandparents and so on alive on something that was similar to bread. The earliest evidence of bread-making dates back to 14,500 years ago, when hunter-gatherers in Jordan made flatbread from wild cereals. Bread-making quickly spread throughout the world, and by 8000 BC, it was being made in Egypt and Mesopotamia. This type of bread was in the form of grains, which was often used to make porridge, beer, and gruel.
There was also a time when bread went bad. Do you remember such a time? If you left the bag of bread open, it would become stale and go bad. After a few days, it might start to grow some green stuff on it, known as mold, and from mold came the accidental discovery of the antibiotic, penicillin. Bread has been the staple of humanity for a very long time, and will continue to be a part of man’s diet throughout the remainder of our existence. Bread is one of the cheapest and most affordable foods in the world. It has kept many people from dying.
Over the years, however, the ingredients of bread, however, have become very different. The difference of ancient bread into the bread just a decade ago meant mold and decay, as part of the natural order of food. As soon as bread went bad, any household would throw it out. There were ways to make bread last longer, including putting it in the freezer or the refrigerator, which could give it an extra few weeks to months of edible life.
Modern bread, unfortunately, no longer goes bad and can be left out for days in the open without growing fungus or mold and seems to never go stale. Natural food may be consumed by bacteria, fungus, insects, or even animals. It seems, however, animals know the difference between real food and artificially and genetically modified food.
White bread, hot dog bread, hamburger bread, whole wheat bread, whole grain bread, and just about any type of bread that is not labeled “organic” lasts forever. If bread lasts forever and does not go bad, perhaps this may be the future of food and considered good, but has enough research been done to ensure that it is okay to be consumed and digested by our bodies? Food that nature breaks down on its own and goes bad seems to be more natural. If a banana is left out for more than a few days, it begins to age, turns brown, then black, and can no longer be consumed. Nearly all foods deemed perishable, including bread, nuts, fruits and vegetables should go bad, as they always have, as nature intended them to do so.
While it may be good that food should never go bad, it is still in the best interests of all of humanity and corporations to ensure that all of human health and consumption of food remains unhindered, ensuring no side effects, specifically weight gain. Maybe one day, bread will go bad again, but when you look at all the ingredients, especially high fructose corn syrup, made to use bread nowadays, you wonder how bread was made in the past and why companies thought they needed to add things to it.
Until then, I have made a personal choice to extremely limit and consume almost no bread. I do not miss bread and believe my life has become much better without it. The choice is yours. Many people continue to enjoy the great food that is bread, regardless of whether it decays or not, and experience no side effects. There will be a time in the future when all of humanity will never know that there was once a day that bread went bad.
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