White Bread (38 page)

38
.  General MacArthur to Ambassador Gasciogne, October 6, 1950, Price and Distribution Division, “Food Branch, 1946–1951,” box 8395, SCAP-NA.

39
.  Reprinted in “Feeding the World's Hungry: Cure for Farm Troubles? An Interview with Ezra Taft Benson,”
Altoona (PA) Mirror
, March 22, 1958, 15.

40
.  George E. Sokolsky, “China's Rice,” Hearst Newspaper Syndication, January 17, 1953.

41
.  “Japanese Eat Various Types of Bread, Grow Taller,” Associated Press Syndication, December 24, 1957.

42
.  Yamakazi Baking Company,
From a Corn of Wheat
, 176.

43
.  Recall that even occupation officials debated whether rice might be a more culturally appropriate bastion of strength. Strains of U.S. popular opinion had also made this argument. For example, a widely reprinted 1951 news piece argued, “The most important thing for the majority of the people of Asia is not Democracy, nor Communism, nor any political ideology—but food, which means life itself. And in most of Asia food is rice.” “Who Controls Rice Supply Controls Asiatic Destiny,”
Richwood Gazette
, June 22, 1951.

44
.  I am grateful to Robert Weis for calling this to my attention.

45
.  Pilcher,
¡Qué Vivan los Tamales!
38.

46
.  Ibid., 77–81.

47
.  Robert Weis, “Por la verdad del Osito Bimbo: Consumo en el Mexico contemporáneo” (master's thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 2001).

48
.  Pilcher,
¡Qué Vivan los Tamales!

49
.  Steven A. Breth,
Principales corrientes de la investigación en el CIM-MYT: Una retrospectiva
(Mexico D.F.: CIMMYT, 1986); Ramón Fernández y Fernández,
El trigo en Mexico
(Mexico D.F.: Banco Nacional de Crédito Agrícola, 1939).

50
.  Fernández y Fernández,
El trigo en Mexico
, 206.

51
.  Quoted in Enrique Ochoa,
Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food since 1910
(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 92.

52
.  My account of the Rockefeller Foundation's work in Mexico is drawn from Jonathan Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding and the Early Years of the Green Revolution in Mexico,”
Agricultural History
83, no. 3 (2009): 384–410; John H. Perkins, “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution, 1941–1956,”
Agriculture and Human Values
7, no. 3 (1990): 6–18; Breth,
Principales corrientes de la investigación en el CIMMYT;
Joseph Cotter,
Troubled Harvest: Agronomy and Revolution in Mexico, 1880–2002
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003); Deborah Fitzgerald, “Exporting American Agriculture: The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, 1943–53,”
Social Studies of Science
16, no. 3 (1986): 457–83; Alicia Maria González, “ ‘El Pan de Cada Día': The Symbols and Expressive Culture of Wheat Bread in Greater Mexico” (PhD diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1986); Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara,
Modernizing Mexican Agriculture: Socioeconomic Implications of Technological Change, 1940–1970
(Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1976); Luisa Paré,
El Plan Puebla: Una revolución verde que está muy verde
(Mexico D.F.: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1970); Andrew Chernocke Pearse,
Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want: Social and Economic Implications of the Green Revolution
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1980); John H. Perkins,
Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Pilcher,
¡Qué Vivan los Tamales!;
Edwin J. Wellhausen, “The Agriculture of Mexico,”
Scientific American
235, no. 3 (1976): 129–50; Angus Wright,
The Death of Ramón González: The Modern Agricultural Dilemna
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).

53
.  These advances were impressive but limited. By the 1970s, for reasons discussed below, Mexico once again had to import wheat to meet its needs. For a more complete discussion, see Ochoa,
Feeding Mexico
.

54
.  Silvia Cherem,
Al grano: Vida y visión de los fundadores de Bimbo
(Mexico D.F.: Khalida, 2008), 67.

55
.  Ibid.; González, “ ‘El Pan de Cada Día,' ” 96.

56
.  Oscar Lewis,
Tepoztlán, Village in Mexico
(New York: Holt, 1960), 11.

57
.  Aase Lionaes, “Award Ceremony Speech for Norman Borlaug,” December 10, 1970, Oslo,
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1970/press.html
.

58
.  On the economic policies of the Mexican Miracle, see Héctor Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer,
In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: Contemporary Mexican History, 1910–1989
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); Kevin J. Middlebrook,
The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and Jaime Ros,
Development and Growth in the Mexican Economy: A Historical Perspective
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).

59
.  Michael Lipton and Richard Longhurst,
New Seeds and Poor People
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

60
.  Perkins, “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution,” 6.

61
.  Aguilar Camín and Meyer,
In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution;
Werner Baer, “Import Substitution and Industrialization in Latin America: Experiences and Interpretations,”
Latin American Research Review
7, no. 1 (1972): 95–122; Fitzgerald, “Exporting American Agriculture”; Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding”; Ochoa,
Feeding Mexico;
Paré,
El Plan Puebla;
Perkins, “The Rockefeller Foundation and the Green Revolution.”

62
.  Harwood, “Peasant Friendly Plant Breeding”; Paré,
El Plan Puebla
.

63
.  Lipton and Longhurst,
New Seeds and Poor People
, 3; Vandana Shiva,
The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics
(London: Zed Books, 1991).

64
.  Bernhard Glaeser,
The Green Revolution Revisited: Critique and Alternatives
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1987); Lipton and Longhurst,
New Seeds and Poor People;
Paré,
El Plan Puebla;
Pearse,
Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want
.

65
.  Amartya Kumar Sen and Jean Drèze,
The Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze Omnibus
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). See also Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collin, and Peter Rosset,
World Hunger: 12 Myths
(New York: Grove, 1998).

66
.  Warren Belasco and Eric Ross provide excellent accounts of the enduring appeal of Malthusian crisis narratives. Belasco,
Meals to Come;
Eric B. Ross,
The Malthus Factor: Population, Poverty, and Politics in Capitalist Development
(London: Zed Books, 1998).

67
.  The history of Grupo Bimbo is drawn from Cherem,
Al grano;
Jaime Crombie, “Man of the Year: Leading Mexico's Global Champion,”
Latin Finance
, March 2010; Roberto Servitje,
Bimbo: Estrategia de éxito empresarial
(Mexico D.F.: Pearson Educación, 2003); Weis, “Por la verdad del Osito Bimbo.”

68
.  Cherem,
Al grano
, 319.

69
.  For example, McWilliams,
Just Food;
Robert Paarlberg,
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept out of Africa
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Paarlberg,
Food Politics
.

1
.  Bill Reed, “Redneck Chic: Endearment or Ridicule?”
Colorado Springs Gazette
, May 9, 2006, 1–3.

2
.  My analysis of white trash parties draws inspiration from a number of sources, including John Hartigan, “Unpopular Culture: The Case of ‘White Trash,' ”
Cultural Studies
11, no. 2 (1997): 316–43; Daniel Harris,
Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism
(New York: Basic Books, 2000); George Lipsitz,
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006); Greg Smith and Pamela Wilson, “Country Cookin' and Cross Dressin': Television, Southern White Masculinities, and Hierarchies of Cultural Taste,”
Television New Media
5 (2004): 175–94.

3
.  Jeff Foxworthy and David Boyd,
You Might Be a Redneck If . . .
(Nashville: Rutledge Hill, 2004).

4
.  Damian Whitworth, “Gutsy Rednecks Know How to Make a Splash,”
Times
(London), July 10, 1999.

5
.  James Salter,
Dusk and Other Stories
(San Francisco: North Point, 1988).

6
.  This chapter owes a great debt to Warren Belasco's path-breaking history of counterculture food politics and its legacies,
Appetite for Change
. Other key sources informing this chapter include Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, “Historicizing the American Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s,” in
Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s
, eds. Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle (New York: Routledge, 2002); Craig Cox,
Storefront Revolution: Food Co-ops and the Counterculture
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994); Thomas Frank,
The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Stephanie Hartman, “The Political Palate: Reading Commune Cookbooks,”
Gastronomica
3, no. 2 (2003): 29–40; Maria McGrath, “Food for Dissent: A History of Natural Foods and Dietary Health Politics and Culture since the 1960s” (PhD diss., Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, 2005); Stephanie A. Slocum-Schaffer,
America in the Seventies
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003); David Steigerwald,
The Sixties and the End of Modern America
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995).

7
.  “Consumer Survey of Bread Wrapper Recognition,” 1954, Loewy Papers, MSS 62142, “Gordon Baking,” box 148; Sister Corita,
Enriched Bread by Corita, Camus, Wonder Bread
(1965).

8
.  Quoted in Belasco,
Appetite for Change
, 48.

9
.  Paula Giese, “The White Bread Scandal,”
North Country Alternatives
9 (1973): 6.

10
.  For example, Jerome Goldstein, “Earl Butz as Wonder Bread,”
Clear Creed
, no. 14 (1972): 53–54.

11
.  Consumers also worried (erroneously) that federal bread regulations would prohibit the marketing of “health breads” containing soy protein and other nonsynthetic enrichment ingredients. Letters, news clippings, and reports related to these and other bread-additive anxieties are found in “General Subject Files, 1951–1953,” boxes 1435–1438, 1562, 1711, FDA-NA. See also “Your Bread: How Safe Is It?”
Consumer Reports
, October 1949, 460–61.

12
.  On 1950s-era bread hearings, see Suzanne Junod, “Chemistry and Controversy: Regulating the Use of Chemicals in Foods, 1883–1959” (PhD diss., Emory University, Atlanta, 1994); “General Subject Files, 1951–1953,” boxes 1435–1438, 1562, 1711, FDA-NA.

13
.  “General Subject Files, 1951,” box 1435–1438, FDA-NA.

14
.  King called for the boycott against Wonder, Coca-Cola, and other food processors discriminating against African Americans in Memphis the night before his assassination. Although this took place in 1968, I consider it an example of the earlier approach to food activism because King's roots lay solidly in the late-1950s and early-1960s civil rights movement.

15
.  Crescent Dragonwagon,
The Commune Cookbook
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972); Beatrice Trum Hunter,
Beatrice Trum Hunter's Baking Sampler
(New Canaan, CT: Keats, 1972), 1. See also McGrath, “Food for Dissent.”

16
.  Braunstein and Doyle, “Historicizing the American Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.”

17
.  Edward Espe Brown,
The Tassajara Bread Book
(Berkeley: Shambhala, 1973), 12; “Digger Bread,”
Mother Earth News
1, no. 1 (1970): 1.

18
.  Brown,
The Tassajara Bread Book
, 12.

19
.  Mo Willett,
Vegetarian Gothic
(Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1975), 87.

20
.  Dragonwagon,
The Commune Cookbook
, 18–20, passim.

21
.  Ibid., 128.

22
.  Ibid., 127.

23
.  Barbara Hansen, “A Harvest of Goodwill Celebrating Day of Bread,”
Los Angeles Times
, October 23, 1969, J1-2.

24
.  E. J. Pyler, “Uniformity Vs. Conformity,”
Baker's Digest
, October 1968, 7.

25
.  “Whole-Grain Bread Sales Seen Higher,”
Los Angeles Times
, October 20, 1977, J14; Rose Lee Cravitz, “Variety Bread Sales Slow after Hot '76,”
Supermarketing
, June 1977; Charles A. Stillwell, “A Study on Current Trends of Bread Consumption Prepared for Prof. Dik Twedt, University of Missouri,” June 7, 1978, Ruth Emerson Library, American Institute of Baking, Manhattan, KS; “Sharp Gains Seen in Bread Consumption,”
Milling and Baking News
, July 12, 1977; Barbara Love, “Variety Bread Sales Gain,”
Supermarketing
, September 1976, 63.