Some things do get better
Hovis has had an ad campaign for years with the tagline 'As good today as it's always been.' I've just put my finger on what bothers me about it.
I hear it as 'Only as good today as it's always been', which is perhaps unfair. But even with a generous interpretation, it's clearly saying it isn't substantially better than it used to be. They've been making bread since 1886, or nearly 130 years. If the bread is more or less the same quality now as it was then ... that's terrible!
Bread back then was disgusting compared to what we get now. Food adulteration was rife. The sheer scale of the problem was beginning to become manifest by the late C19th, as the lab techniques to prove it were being invented. They had eye-popping findings such as a majority of bread being heavily cut with alum, or worse. At least it was technically illegal by 1886, but it still went on. Even if what was in your bread was just the stuff you would hope was in it, it was still rubbish. Strains of wheat were not as nutritious as they are now. They were sown and grew unevenly. There was no way of measuring the ripeness of the crop to pick the best time to harvest it, and no way to dry off the crop if it was a bit rainy round harvest time. Much more crap (both literal and figurative) got harvested along with the grain and found its way in to the stores. Grain stores were much less effective, with much more contamination by insects, mice, rats and birds. And, of course, much more spoilage by molds, mildews and so on. Milling was a further source of significant contamination, and nowhere near as regular and well-controlled, which made for inferior flour. Hovis were pioneers of new techniques in flour treatment and bread-making, but were nothing like as good as you can get now. The whole process was wildly variable - and the maths to do proper quality control wasn't even invented until about 50 years later.
Mass-market bread 130 years ago was, frankly, horrible. I expect Hovis was better than most and was a premium brand, but the standard was appallingly low. The extremely wealthy ate better, since they could buy premium flour from trusted sources and bake it in-house (so long as they hadn't pissed off any of the servants in the supply chain). But I'm pretty sure that the mass-market bread you can buy now is way better than that, and the premium bread you can buy now (or make yourself) is even more delicious still.
We live in times of plenty and quality! (We still suck at fair distribution - I am horrified that bread queues are making a comeback in the shape of food banks.) If your product is only as good as it was 130 years ago, it's probably rubbish.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/274798.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
I hear it as 'Only as good today as it's always been', which is perhaps unfair. But even with a generous interpretation, it's clearly saying it isn't substantially better than it used to be. They've been making bread since 1886, or nearly 130 years. If the bread is more or less the same quality now as it was then ... that's terrible!
Bread back then was disgusting compared to what we get now. Food adulteration was rife. The sheer scale of the problem was beginning to become manifest by the late C19th, as the lab techniques to prove it were being invented. They had eye-popping findings such as a majority of bread being heavily cut with alum, or worse. At least it was technically illegal by 1886, but it still went on. Even if what was in your bread was just the stuff you would hope was in it, it was still rubbish. Strains of wheat were not as nutritious as they are now. They were sown and grew unevenly. There was no way of measuring the ripeness of the crop to pick the best time to harvest it, and no way to dry off the crop if it was a bit rainy round harvest time. Much more crap (both literal and figurative) got harvested along with the grain and found its way in to the stores. Grain stores were much less effective, with much more contamination by insects, mice, rats and birds. And, of course, much more spoilage by molds, mildews and so on. Milling was a further source of significant contamination, and nowhere near as regular and well-controlled, which made for inferior flour. Hovis were pioneers of new techniques in flour treatment and bread-making, but were nothing like as good as you can get now. The whole process was wildly variable - and the maths to do proper quality control wasn't even invented until about 50 years later.
Mass-market bread 130 years ago was, frankly, horrible. I expect Hovis was better than most and was a premium brand, but the standard was appallingly low. The extremely wealthy ate better, since they could buy premium flour from trusted sources and bake it in-house (so long as they hadn't pissed off any of the servants in the supply chain). But I'm pretty sure that the mass-market bread you can buy now is way better than that, and the premium bread you can buy now (or make yourself) is even more delicious still.
We live in times of plenty and quality! (We still suck at fair distribution - I am horrified that bread queues are making a comeback in the shape of food banks.) If your product is only as good as it was 130 years ago, it's probably rubbish.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/274798.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.