Loved that stuff. One of the better programs that combined government underwriting dairy farmers while providing food to the poor. I can literally remember my parents lining up and getting handed their cheese from a truck. I was maybe… 9? Lean years for a while there for us, but I’m thankful for the cheese.
The video was interesting, but I still find it annoying every youtube video channel seems to want to do snarky asides with their deep dive into some esoteric factual knowledge. It’s just feels sad to me that we have to have jokes to learn these days.
Vividly. Not only were we poor, but there is an evangelical summer camp on my family farm. My grandmother was the original cook, then my mom took over in the early 80s. We would go to the State depot or whatever it was called and pick up rations for the summer. Giant logs of shitty Smellveeta, cans of overcooked veggies and huge oil cans of peanut butter. The whole time my dad insisting they were exactly the same as brand names.
Man, I wish I’d thought of the name Smellveeta when I was younger.
A friend of mine did some kind of final project for culinary school about bread, and how putting it in plastic is the true sign of bad bread. Locally made stuff is fresh and comes in paper wrapping, factory made stuff is in plastic and tends to have preservatives.
When in conversation with folks who complain about what is being bought with food stamps/SNAP benefits I bring up bread-a good, nutritious loaf of bread can cost 5 or 6 times what a cheap, air filled loaf does and has fewer slices-so that’s fewer sandwiches per loaf.
I’m guessing Wonder Bread is much the same as Mother’s Pride in UK. Squishy, mass-produced, air-filled, tasteless pap, popular in the '60s and '70s. I haven’t seen it for years but apparently they now use the brand to clothe some sort of ‘Scottish’ bread.
We had a Wonder Bread factory in Wichita, and when the video mentioned marketing techniques, it reminded me of how they had a special sector dedicated to making mini-loaves especially for school field trips or samples to prospective retail stores. Sure, it was very heavy-handed bribery, but we kids thought it was awesome to have a baby bread loaf to take home.
When I was a kid the only bread my mother would buy was pumpernickel, jewish rye, or bread made out of pressed seeds. I distinctly remember following my mother around the store BEGGING her to buy the White Wonder Bread, “It’s only 2 for $1.00.” I knew we were not rich and I totally thought we could afford 2 for $1. Now I’m glad my mother never gave in.
There were times in my 20s where i was abysmally poor, and my parents were also going through a hard time financially. They still made sure that i was eating right and told me not to get crappy processed food, if you want to keep your health and improve your mental well-being it’s worth getting something decent and making yourself home cooked meals. Glad for that lesson and i do my best to hold to it
Remember when Pizza Hut had the Book It! program in public schools? If you read X number of pages/books you’d get a free personal pan pizza. In our town Pizza Hut was like a Michelin-starred restaurant that we only got to go to once in a blue moon. Getting a free pizza was like being touched by god.
Just the other day I had a memory of being in Pizza Hut with my mom and the server coming around telling every table that the Gulf War had just begun. I immediately lost my appetite and I resent that server to this day for it.
Apparently, Book It! Was revived a few years ago. I don’t even know if there’s a Pizza Hut nearby, though.
Go back to the times of aristocracy, and it was a sign of wealth and status to be able to have perfectly crafted loaves of white bread available for your next extravagent display of waste and excess that was your average party. But then, the Pullman loaf and modern what milling made white flour trivially easy to acquire, so what was the upper-crust class supposed to do? Talk down the very thing they used to consider a status symbol, of course.
No - Mother’s Pride was sort of traditional loaf-shaped. But I know what you’re talking about - I remember the cylindrical/ribbed loaf too. Can’t for the life of me remember the brand name.
When I was in elementary school in the early seventies the Wonder bread truck came around to our school and handed out miniature loaves of Wonder bread to all the students. This was presumably to get us hooked on thier product. Good times.
