Similarly, a century ago demanding whiteness was a way to fight corruption and adulteration in purchased food.
Today a fashionable diet item such as South American quinoa may look like ground-up bugs, but we trust that supermarkets couldn’t get away with selling us ground-up bugs. (They can’t, can they?) Back then, however, people didn’t put much faith in grocery stores and restaurants, especially when they were traveling—and often with good reason.
Now, though, even if we get food poisoning we have antibiotics to keep us alive. The introduction of penicillin around 1945 made American life less fraught—the chance of dropping dead from bad bacteria declined sharply.
Sailer does an excellent job in this article making a “Chicago Economics” style of argument: When we observe people doing something odd or seemingly counter to their best interests, there must be a good reason.
Tags: White Bread, Wonder Bread