Starting January 18, 1943—the midst of World War II—sliced bread was barred from American bakeries and homes. New baking regulations set by the Office of Price Administration had boosted flour prices, and the government wanted to prevent these costs from getting passed down to the consumer. By banning the use of expensive bread-slicing machines, the government was hoping bakeries could keep their prices low. Officials were also worried about the country's supply of wax paper—and sliced bread required twice as much paraffin wrapping as an unsliced loaf. (It prevented the slices from drying prematurely.)
Today I Learned
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
I would love to see a return of wax paper instead of plastic bags.
Wax paper is great! What I think is so funny about this is that to me wax paper feels more premium. I guess it's because it's because plastic is so ubiquitous that despite being an incredible and versatile material, it's also ridiculously mundane.
Your local neighborhood bakery almost certainly still uses wax paper instead of bags. I don't eat much bread these days, but when I do I always just walk down to the bakery and pick out a loaf. It's a million times better than the sugary stuff full of preservatives at the grocery store.
Would it be actual wax paper? These days it could just as likely be coated with plastic rather than wax, as the plastic coatings do the same thing and are cheaper.
I've just spent a while searching and can't find any reliable way to tell whether paper is wax coated, oil coated, plastic coated, or silicone coated.
Wax paper tastes different
And reacts differently to abrasion, high heat, etc.
The silicone-coated stuff is generally called parchment paper. I've never seen plastic or oil-coated paper sold as wax paper.
Fun fact- traditional parchment paper is soaked in sulfuric acid
Yeah, I always rip off a piece of the paper and give it a munch before buying the bread to make sure its made with actual wax instead of plastic
You should! It's probably not bad for you. It hasn't killed me yet anyway.
I wish I had a local bakery like that. We have a few pastry shops, but unsweet bread is harder to come by.
Same, we have grocery store bakeries, a pie place, a cupcakes, and one French guy who is only open on the weekends
What do you do if you need a French guy on weekdays?
Go look in the pond
Local bakery is great but definitely uses plastic containers and bags
My local bakeries use paper bags. But they also don't sell sliced bread.
Wax paper isn’t recyclable and putting paraffin in landfills isn’t great. Regular brown paper in a freshly made local bakery is quite fine, though.
Did it work?
No. Homemakers objected, exceptions were passed, and then the ban was rescinded about a month later.
So if your bakery already had the bread slicing machine then you were still good? Except not being allowed to use wax paper of course.
By banning the use of expensive bread-slicing machines,
So they didn't actually try banning sliced bread.
I learnt from xkcd :-)
Haha same. I didn't believe it and found the article
Snakes are wide instead of long lol imagine
In the UK, bakers were forbidden from selling bread on the day it was baked, in order to make it more stale and reduce demand.
"During WW1" is the context for this
And WWII.
And WWIII??
Is this a Douglas Adams bit?
Sadly, no:
Bakers, bakeries and bakers shops were required by law only to sell their 'national loaves' when they were a day old because stale bread did not cut to waste like fresh bread. Source
[If you can find it, the BBC Timeshift episode 'Bread: A Loaf Affair' mentions this along with a surprisingly interesting modern-ish history of bread in the UK. It's narrated by Tom Baker.]
Wtf does cut to waste mean?
Thick instead of thin?
I have actually been googling the hell out of this and I still don't know.
Bing AI gave me this: "The phrase "did not cut to waste" in the context of bread rationing during wartime refers to the idea that stale bread, being firmer and less crumbly than fresh bread, could be sliced more thinly and evenly without falling apart or producing excess crumbs. "
Perhaps it means when you cut it, it doesn't mold as fast?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it means to cut in a wasteful manner, particularly in terms of fabric. From elsewhere, it looks like it's also used in construction in regards to cutting material such that the remaining sections are not usable for other purposes.
However, I'm not sure how stale bread discourages such cuts.
Fresh bread tastes amazing. You overconsume by eating it by itself.
Stale bread tastes... stale. You actually cut thin slices so you can top it with stuff that masks it.
I see where he got his sense of humour at least. I'll try to find that, thanks.
Thank you! Learned something.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Sliced bread, humanity’s downfall
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.