White bread

White bread

White bread is bread made from wheat flour from which the bran and often the germ have been removed, in contrast to whole wheat bread made from whole wheat flour, in which these parts are retained and contribute a brownish color. In addition, this white flour is often bleached using potassium bromate or chlorine dioxide gas to remove any slight yellow color and make its baking properties more predictable.

The development of white bread was a response to the adaptation of the grocery business to modern commerce. Bleaching gives white flour a far longer shelf life than whole wheat flour, and bread made from it has a longer shelf life. This allows it to survive storage and long transit times.

White bread is often criticized for being less nutritious than other breads. Most of the vitamins inherent in wheat are removed along with the germ or destroyed in the bleaching process. In the United States, by law, white flour must be enriched with vitamins, replacing most of the major vitamins removed by bleaching - though critics claim that valuable trace minerals removed by bleaching are not replaced in the enrichment process. Counter-arguments to this claim note that the amount of trace minerals in bread is minuscule to begin with and their supply is easily substituted by other common dietary constituents such as fruits and vegetables. Most commercial white bread contains little dietary fiber when compared to bread that includes bran. A low fiber diet is linked in some instances to cases of both constipation and diarrhea. Canadian grain regulations require relatively high amounts of protein in their grain, resulting in a style of bread known as Canadian white.

White bread is also criticized for being too easily digested, resulting in more drastic rising and falling of blood sugar and insulin levels than results from eating slower digesting whole grain breads.

American bakers have attempted to respond to these criticisms with modifications to their recipes and with the proliferation of a group of "specialty" bread products. Many of these are essentially white bread with a few additives. Most commercial "whole-wheat" or "brown" bread produced in the U.S. is primarily composed of bleached white flour with the addition of enough brown flour to be brown in appearance.Fact|date=February 2007 Bolted or "unbleached" flour has about 20% of its natural bran.

Other meanings

Whitebread was a pejorative term used by Soviets to refer to AmericansFact|date=April 2007. The term can also refer to alleged blandness or plainness in a person. Its usage is similar to that of the term "plain vanilla". In the DC comic book, "Justice League International", the sarcastic Green Lantern Guy Gardner would often refer to his innocent, pure-hearted teammate Captain Marvel as ‘Captain Whitebread’.


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • white-bread — white′ bread adj. usage: This term is used with disparaging intent, implying a contempt for the values of the white middle class. inf: disp. 1) inf off pertaining to or characteristic of the white middle class; bourgeois: white bread… …   From formal English to slang

  • white-bread — adj AmE informal relating to white people who are considered traditional and boring in their opinions and way of life ▪ a white bread family …   Dictionary of contemporary English

  • white-bread — white ,bread adjective AMERICAN INFORMAL ordinary or traditional, used especially to refer to the behavior and values typical of white North Americans: white bread tastes …   Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

  • white-bread — If something is white bread, it is very ordinary, safe and boring …   The small dictionary of idiomes

  • white bread — white′ bread′ n. coo any white or light colored bread made from finely ground, usu. bleached, flour • Etymology: 1300–50 …   From formal English to slang

  • white bread — n. bread of a light color, made from finely sifted wheat flour …   English World dictionary

  • white-bread — ☆ white bread [hwitbred΄ ] adj. Informal 1. of or characteristic of the white middle class, its values, etc. 2. bland, conventional, etc …   English World dictionary

  • white bread — c.1300, as opposed to darker whole grain type; its popularity among middle class America led to the slang sense of conventional, bourgeois (c.1980) …   Etymology dictionary

  • white bread — /ˈwaɪt brɛd/ (say wuyt bred) noun 1. bread made from bolted flour (opposed to brown bread and black bread). –adjective 2. of or relating to an environment seen as privileged and socially conservative: a white bread playground; a white bread… …  

  • white-bread — American white bread people or things are ordinary and boring, and often those that are typical of white, American people. It s a movie about middle America white bread characters living white bread lives. (always before noun) …   New idioms dictionary

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