Analysis Of Bread By Bobrow-Strain

Focusing on the commodity of white bread, one might believe that consuming bread is an act of eating that has become a basic necessity in almost every home around the world. Many individuals would not question bread because it is always found on the shelves of grocery stores making its way into their homes in a cheap, fast and convenient way. For Aaron Bobrow-Strain, bread has become much more than a simplistic commodity, in his book he is able to use bread as a metaphor to illustrate issues of power and also examine the way that we think about our social lives (p. 167&169). His book reveals the history of white bread in order to describe the social dynamics associated with this commodity while also focusing on issues of racialization, gender

To understand how bread reflects an individuals relationship to the global food system, Bobrow-Strain structures his book by providing numerous dreams that pertain to bread and the consequences that these dreams have on consumer demands. The chapters explore dreams such as, purity, cognation, control, abundance, health, strength, peace, resistance and status. Bobrow-Strain begins each chapter exploring the dream and the intentions that this dream set out to have which ultimately lead to bigger unintended consequences. This allows for him to demonstrate how food is always more than fuel for our bodies, it creates socioeconomic and emotional impacts. Bobrow-Strain sets out to make the reader realize that the dream surrounding “ good food” no longer focuses on the food we eat but rather the changes that need to be made within the food system, however his work leaves the reader with many unanswered questions on the measures that need to take place in order to make transformation

He makes it seem that by learning the history of bread we will be able to not repeat mistakes that we have made in the past. We often structure our world in a way that reflects the past whether this is through the food system or the larger inequalities that we face. Bobrow-Strain constantly displays this throughout his book and by examining the dreams that bread contains the reader realizes that we still have similar if not the same dreams with almost all food commodities. This raises questions on if individuals should even bother to create a new dream like the one he mentions about fermentation or should we try and change all of these dreams to create a new mindset? (p.