(Courtesy of Tomascastelazo/Wikipedia Commons)
This piece is from the CU Independent’s opinion section. Any opinions or views do not represent the CU Independent.
It’s been almost a year since Flora passed.
I only had her for about nine months, feeding her daily and watching her grow. She bubbled with excitement each time I brought her out onto the kitchen counter. She reacted best with a blend of whole wheat flour and dark rye, wafts of vinegary fermentation blooming inside her.
Flora was my late sourdough starter. She died with mold spores consuming her body under cold conditions behind the ever-present marinara sauce jar. Our time together was short, but she irreversibly changed my understanding of bread as a vessel for nourishment rather than a processed filler.
Like many others, I started making sourdough during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A trend of micro-bakeries popped up, as well as traditional lifestyles like homesteading and subsistence farming. The time of uncertainty and quarantined loneliness triggered some primitive instinct in humanity, leading many to cling to the seed of our earlier agricultural civilizations: grain-filled goodness fresh from the oven.
Despite a resurgence back to traditional ways, there are still tendrils of fear and misleading information surrounding the topic of “healthy” bread consumption. The current U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) has only added fuel to that fire.
On Jan. 7, the Department of Agriculture and HHS launched “Eat Real Food” and the newest Dietary Guidelines for Americans as part of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign. Real Food’s purpose is to combat the chronic disease crisis that plagues older Americans by encouraging healthier eating. However, MAHA does not acknowledge the root causes of chronic diseases, such as inaccessibility to affordable groceries. Despite the administration’s promises to make groceries more affordable, the typical American family paid $310 more on groceries in 2025 compared to 2024.
Most prominently, Real Food flipped the long-standing food pyramid upside down. This places meat and dairy products at the top with the highest priority and bread products at the bottom with the lowest priority. Why represent bread, an affordable food, as an afterthought? “Whole grains are encouraged. Refined carbohydrates are not,” the website reads. It got that part right. But processed breads in America came from their own origin of economic depression.
Food culture experts in National Geographic’s 2024 series “World Eats Bread” refer to this origin as the start of Wonder Bread America, when mass production of bread became normalized. Wonder Bread launched in 1921 and became a regular in kitchen cupboards by the thirties. It was cheap, the flavor was consistent, and the shelf life got Americans through the Great Depression. It was the perfect loaf, a flagship for thousands of bread companies that make up an entire aisle at the grocery store.
And yet, this culture surrounding processed breads has limited our collective perception of the staple. Bread is a quick fix or a filler. Alternatively, it’s the reason for the pimple on your chin or the reason for your bloat. It’s something to reduce or avoid completely. The average American does not have their own Flora. Odds are that when you think of bread, you’re thinking of a loaf in a plastic bag coiled at the top and secured with a twisty tie or a bread clip. Maybe every once in a while, you treat yourself to a whole grain or one enveloped in seeds and nuts, but the default you think of is something adjacent to Wonder Bread.
But the truth is this: when bread is made with natural fermentation and locally milled grains, it doesn’t leave you sluggish in regret. The prebiotics in sourdough are kinder to the gut and help with digestion. Whole grains and fiber are nourishing and filling. There are so many flavor profiles to achieve in small batches, something that mass-produced bread can’t replicate.
Public bread is nothing new; many countries and cultures accept bread as a vital part of culture and life and want to guarantee quality for all. The Turkish government funds a public bread company (Istanbul Halk Ekmek) to keep it low-priced. Syria is home to many public bakeries. Russia heavily subsidizes the production of dark rye sourdough while keeping high-quality standards in place.
Bread was a depression staple for a reason: it’s low-cost with a high energy supply. When MAHA praises meat and gives bread so little appreciation, it disregards whole communities of Americans that do not have access or money to regularly consume quality protein—especially when they’re competing with growing prices.
Instead, the administration should uplift bread as one of the most democratic foods in the world and put funding into higher-quality options. Dietary guidelines are not enough. Americans need government support for local mills and craft bread makers that can guarantee quality, whole-grain bread everywhere.
Contact CU Independent Writer Sarah Taylor at sarah.taylor@colorado.edu
