Bravo for bread as it breaches the walls of wellness
In no particular order, things I have been irrationally terrified of during my life include: boa constrictors, crocodiles, tsunamis, the walking dead, white bread, spaghetti and a tray of brownies left unattended.
Just as fairy tales bewitch toddlers with monsters under the bed, so too has wellness, sleek progeny of the diet-industrial complex, ensured that women (and some men) are petrified of real sugar, full-fat milk or any white food. I pity those who suffered through years of egg-white omelettes when cholesterol was the demon du jour. My grandmother still carries artificial sweeteners in a Ziploc bag in her handbag.
My particular list of once fearsome foods won’t surprise anyone who remembers the moment just a decade ago when gluten unseated Satan as the source of all evil.
A dangerous allergen for some, but an unfortunate diet trend for many more, gluten was just the tip of the iceberg. At some point in the past 10 years, wellness stopped being about adding good foods in (nutrition, fibre, wheatgrass) and switched to cutting “bad” foods out.
We called this reincarnation of fad dieting “clean eating”. It helped to make food the second-biggest sector in the wellness industry, at $648bn in value trailing only anti-ageing.
Juice cleanses promised to rid your body of toxins you didn’t know you had, targeting flaws you couldn’t see. They were expensive ways to starve. Then there was the 30-day “reset” diet, which forbade sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, soya and dairy. Try thinking about anything other than food when you’re figuring out what you can eat besides eggs.
Other incarnations include the Paleo diet, which encouraged followers to eat only foods that were available to cavemen, known for their good health and long lifespans.
We waged war on food, and on ourselves, all in the name of feeling better. Yet many of these clean-eating trends were masks for a commonality: culturally sanctioned disordered eating.
However, recently I have sensed a profound shift. Clean eating is out of fashion, and, in a comeback more surprising than Martha Stewart’s, bread is cool once again.
Real bread. Crusty, leavened rye, sourdough, wheat and country white have left the domain of hipsterdom and reentered the mainstream. It is a popular middle-class pursuit to keep your own vile sourdough starter and bake hard-earned loaves on Saturday mornings. After nine years of rapid growth, the number of gluten-free products launched in 2018 fell by almost 40% from 2017.
The unlikely resurrection of gluten’s strongest ally has ushered in a host of other calorific companions. People eat real sugar again, and real butter. This is good, as salted butter is the secret meaning of life.
Trends are by definition cyclical, as evidenced by the surprising resurrection of mom jeans and crocheted bikinis. But I have another theory about the triumphant return of real food.
If the world is warming, continents are ablaze with unstoppable wildfires and liberal democracy is going to the dogs, who has the energy to care about carbs? You might as well have a cookie. Probably even two.
I’m not sorry to see the back of the war on food. The wellness industry seems to be evolving in more progressive ways, encouraging people to take time for themselves, to focus on mental health and relationships. Millennials have revived the home-cooked dinner party, which can be read as an attempt at an antidote to our increasing atomisation.
However, the rebranding of wellness has also broadened its scope. Suddenly people who prided themselves on never being sucked into a trendy fixation with caveman cleanses are obsessing over how many steps they take every day or how many mornings in a row they have meditated with their mindfulness app.
Yet I am optimistic about one particular dietary trend from the 1990s that is regaining ground: “intuitive eating”. This is a philosophy that encourages people to eat what they want when they’re hungry, and stop when they’re full. Like we did as children, before we were taught that food was something to be afraid of.
The wellness industry will catch up, no doubt. But hopefully bread can stay top dog for another few hundred years. Let the boomers be the only ones who add Splenda to their coffee. We have real monsters to fight. /©