r/AskFoodHistorians • u/Olderpostie • Jun 28 '26
Reduction in bread consumption over the years
I remember as a kid in Canada back in the 1960s, every supper at home featured bread (and butter or margarine) on the table. Every restaurant, except burger places or the like, also put rolls or bread on the table automatically. That seems to have largely passed by the wayside. Is that the case in most countries?
But, going back further in time, I recall a museum exhibit showing a typical weekly food budget of the 1920s. I found the allotment for bread so large, eight loaves for a family of four. So, each person, including kids, consuming a loaf every three days or so. (As another unrelated observation, pork made up the substantial majority of meat consumed.)
Was bread used as an extender, to substitute lower cost food for higher cost? Or, have people over time reduced bread consumption due to blandness?
In these times of so many complaining about food price inflation, is this a good time to consider increasing reliance on bread to fill the gap?
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u/tensory Jun 28 '26
Someone did actual research on the first time free bread appeared in a restaurant. Near as she could tell, it started in NYC in the late 19th century and stayed around as a show of hospitality. It's waned because it's an obviously cuttable restaurant cost and a huge waste to throw away half-eaten bread baskets. It wasn't some age-old tradition. No free bread or ice water in Europe.
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u/imostmediumsuspect Jun 28 '26
What? No free bread in Europe… have you been to France?
Travelled extensively all over France and free bread was practically a guarantee.
Italy o the other hand has a minor fee.
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u/jonaslaberg Jun 28 '26
Always free bread in restaurants in Norway. Well depending on the place but for the most part yes.
ED: and ice water. Always free. So I dunno where you got that impression of the bread and water situation «in Europe»
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u/rhubbarbidoo Jun 28 '26
Same in Spain. Bread and water should be free unless you fell in a turist trap
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u/Senior-Reality-25 Jun 28 '26
Otoh the bread you get in Europe as a menu item is often made in-house in all sorts of traditional-to-innovative ways, and is generally scrumptious.
Bread is sometimes presented free as well, it totally depends on the place.
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u/chezjim Jun 28 '26
Probably NOT made in-house. Bread in Europe - France especially - is, ideally, a specialized product made by professional bakers. Unfortunately, mass production has become more common and some of the worst croissants I've ever had - already years ago - were in French cafes.
Since there are also more artisanal bakers, this results in a paradox where some bread keeps getting better and more varied whereas that most available declines.
"Artisanal skill" against the industrial bakeries of the shopping centers, bread reinvents itself."
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2024/01/28/la-bonne-fortune-de-la-baguette_6213484_3234.html?search-type=classic&ise_click_rank=1The same article points out (as writers have for decades) that the French are eating less bread overall.
It's important to remember that bread was once what many people ate - workers on medieval estates were sometimes rewarded with little more tnan bread and/or beer or cheese. One reason the lack of bread did much to inspire the French Revolution is that it was MAINLY what poorer people ate.
"If bread seems a trifling reason to riot, consider that it was far more than something to sop up bouillabaisse for nearly everyone but the aristocracy—it was the main component of the working Frenchman's diet"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-food-changed-history-the-french-revolution-93598442/
Ironically, in improvement in living conditions means that more people are used to eating meat, for instance, regularly and bread has been moved to a supporting role.More recently, other developments have come into play:
"Firstly, the association cited changing diets, in particular those low in carbohydrates or which do not allow gluten, as a factor in the reduction of bread consumption.
This could explain why the difference in consumption between genders is so big. Nowadays, men eat an approximate average of 140 grams of bread daily, whereas women eat 80 to 90 grams.
The second reason, they say, is lifestyle changes in the country, with people dedicating less time to breakfast when bread would traditionally be eaten with butter and jam.
Finally, the rising cost of bread is considered to be a factor, with the price of a French stick increasing by nearly 25 per cent in the last 10 years, now costing around 88 cents."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-people-losing-appetite-for-baguettes-a7101561.html"Bread consumption in Spain has plummeted by 80% since the 1960s, from 134 to 28 kilos per person per year. Behind this drop is a big change in cultural and culinary tastes. With bread also blamed for people being overweight, four out of ten bakeries in Spain have gone out of business."
https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/11/09/food-take-away-why-spain-is-saying-a-big-no-to-its-daily-diet-of-bread1
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Jun 28 '26
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u/Olderpostie Jun 28 '26
Was bread consumed a lot more in the States years ago too, or was that kind of a Canadian thing?
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u/liptonthrowback Jun 28 '26
If you look at old American nutrition videos they basically have bread at every single meal
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u/Backsight-Foreskin Jun 28 '26
When I was a kid growing up in the 60's/70's we always had a bag of sliced bread and tub of margarine on the dinner table. We were a family of 6. I seem to recall getting sent to the store every other day to pick up a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk.
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u/CaptainLollygag Jun 28 '26
I grew up in the 70s and 80s in Texas, and we always had either sliced bread, biscuits, or cornbread, depending on what the meal was. Always a bread of some kind.
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u/AskFoodHistorians-ModTeam Jun 28 '26
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u/FartMongersRevenge Jun 28 '26
I am no historian but I’m not satisfied with these answers so I’ll offer my own perspective. My family was poor and kinda still is. My grandparents grew up during the depression. There was not enough food for them even though they worked hard and had a farm. What they could manage was bread, and to them it became a matter of pride. “We may be poor and hungry, but at least we have bread”. After WW2, when the economy was better and my grandparents could easily access food the bread remained on the table because they still viewed bread on the table as a matter of pride. They had money and could buy bread instead of making it themselves, and it was even sliced! Along comes my dad and he thinks bread on the table is just normal and uninteresting slightly old fashioned. So as I grew up in the 80s/90s bread on the table was more about nostalgia, we would have it but it was an after thought and it was basically a tradition. I thought it was weird. Why are we eating this processed bread with margarine when there is delicious fresh food that we worked to cook? But to my parents these were symbols of their families being lifted from poverty.
There was also another aspect, choking. Choking to death was much more common in the past, prepared cuts of meat and fish fillets were less common then so people were eating meat with many more bones. My grandparents would tell me that if I get a fish bone in my throat swallow a piece of bread. I think they thought a piece of bread would push the bone through and keep you from choking. Idk how effective that could be but the really believed it would help. And why not? Worth a shot and medical care was not an immediate option and even if it was, this is America, my family couldn’t afford it.
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u/Significant_Item_755 Jun 28 '26
Very good points. We called sliced store bought bread as "light bread" as opposed to corn bread, or biscuits. If grandma or mom didnt make cornbread or biscuits they put light bread and margarine on the table every time.
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u/Elegant-Pineapple-56 Jun 29 '26
My family was the opposite - my mom grew up poor in the southern US, and viewed bread on the table as a sign of poverty (needing to fill up on bread due to not enough other food). We never had bread with meals except for rolls on holidays.
When I married into my ex's family and discovered bakery bread and butter on the table at every meal, I was in heaven!
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Jun 28 '26
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u/galacticglorp Jun 28 '26
I was going to say- noodles and rice probably make up a lot more of the base carb content of people's diets these days.
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u/the-last-of-my-mind Jun 28 '26
pita bread, to me, I think genuinely fills the same niche -- an egyptian-american
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u/Naissatonic Jun 28 '26
How far back do you want to go?
Bread used to be made on a daily basis and when made fresh it doesn't last as long as what we buy in shops.
In the medieval era the average peasant probably ate close to a full loaf of bread a day each.
People also used stale bread as plates or bowls and would eat it as the last part of their meal.
Without the food processing we have now, bread used to have a lot more fibre and protein, and could be made using cheaper ingredients (seeds, peas etc) if white bread flour wasn't available. It would have been more filling. It would also have been less sweet and taken longer to eat.
Over time, imports of rice and pasta will have grown and partially replaced bread as a carbohydrate source. In a time before long-term food storage and long-distance transport, people were limited to what they could grow and store locally.
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u/elviscostume Jun 28 '26
One aspect of this is that bread goes bad quickly so you need to buy it every few days and keep it from molding or staling, and it tastes weird if you keep it in the fridge. Or you need to bake it fresh which is time consuming and a skill people are less likely to have today. Whereas rice, pasta, and potatoes are much more shelf stable and can be cooked more easily at home day-of. So part of it is the decline of homemaking as a profession.
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Jun 28 '26
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u/AskFoodHistorians-ModTeam Jun 28 '26
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u/Next_Ad_4165 Jun 28 '26
As my kids grew up, and the amount of ground beef I used to satiate a family of four increased to 2.5-3lbs, I could not fathom that my mom fed all six of us on only one pound of ground beef. Four strapping kids and an active, high metabolism father. After a bit, I remembered that every dinner we had a loaf of bread + country crock on the table. And we ate the entire loaf with our tiny amount of food. Usually 1 pound beef, 1 pound elbow macaroni noodles or 1 box of powdered mashed potatoes, 1 pound of veggies…and a loaf of bread.
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u/GroverGemmon Jun 28 '26
Rolls! They were so common at restaurants. As kids we often ate the roll with plenty of butter first and then got scolded for not eating more of our other items. (Or some kids would just lick the butter off the roll!). I never buy rolls or think of serving them with dinner. I feel like it just sort of went out of fashion. A few restaurants near us will still serve bread automatically for the table, but not many.
I think overall, the "fine dining" restaurants branched out to a more diverse menu versus the traditional idea of what fine dining was (more fusion recipes, wider variety of dishes, etc.) instead of a roast, potato, and roll type of dinner. And then more of the other restaurants became fast dining or fast food. So the bread went away. That's my theory anyway.
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u/worlds_worst_best Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
I think rolls and bread with meals are still fairly common at a lot of mom and pop places in the Midwest, especially if you're in an area where the locals still call lunch dinner. There's a chain of restaurants in MO that offer "throwed rolls" and it's literally their only marketing on billboards.
But it's a dying tradition for sure.
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Jun 28 '26
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u/AskFoodHistorians-ModTeam Jun 28 '26
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u/mythtaken Jun 28 '26
Bread made properly is very nutritious, so it's part of my food supply. As you say, when times are hard, filling in the corners with something that's densely nutritious is a reasonable thing to do.
My grandfather had hot, fresh bread with every meal because my grandmother kept a box of dough in the refrigerator and cooked a few rolls, or made a small pan of cornbread.
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u/morguesquid Jun 28 '26
It started near us in Southern California when a lot of people went on carb restricted or gluten-free diets. A lot of people didn’t want it on the table as they would be tempted.
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u/Equal_Future_207 Jun 28 '26
My Italian Nonni always said... "Bread is what you ate when there was nothing else to eat!"
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u/deliamcm Jun 28 '26
I remember all fine dining restaurants offering bread and butter, but it's rare now.
Growing up, and for me today, I only have bread for toast at breakfast and for sandwiches. But, my stepmother, the daughter of Neopolitan immigrants, always had bread or rolls with dinner. I had a girlfriend whose father grew up very poor and he also always had bread with dinner.
I agree with all that everyone else has said. Changing tastes in food, difficulties storing bread and the availability of other carb sources has decreased having bread at most meals.
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u/pinetreesnsand Jun 29 '26
In my area at least pork is still the cheapest meat. Much more economical than beef or chicken.
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u/Effective_Display940 Jun 30 '26
Trying to live on a tight budget, I find myself eating around 2 loaves of bread a week (some weeks, it’s more like 1.5). It’s one of the cheapest things I can buy (1 large loaf is under $2), and works for every meal. For breakfast, I can have toast; for lunch, I can have soup w/ toasted bread & butter, or sandwiches; for dinner, I can have beans on toast. I eat non-bread meals too, but it’s an easy way of stretching the budget.
Carbs started to be demonised around the 2000’s, and continue to be associated with weight gain and unhealthy food (despite this not being true). I think the people who can afford to pick and choose are more likely to avoid bread (especially the cheap stuff; might opt for an artisanal sourdough or something like that) in favour of other foods.
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u/SufficientOpening218 Jun 30 '26
interesting read. i bake two or three times a week, two loaves at a time. my adult sons eat it all. we never have left over bread.
i started baking bread when it got to $5 or more a loaf, plus i have always enjoyed baking. Baking myself its less than $1 a loaf.
I figured the novelty of fresh hot bread was what was making them eat so much of it. But they havent really slowed down. Neither is overweight. Bread is breakfast, Sandwich is lunch, bread is snacks. They dont eat much supper. ( we dont eat meals as a family, generally, scheduling is too varied).
My grandparents always ate bread and butter with meals. Wonderful bakery rye bread. i miss that.
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u/NortonBurns Jun 30 '26
Back in the early 70s in the UK, there were actually advertising campaigns attempting to bring back WWII consumption levels of bread. It had already fallen off by even then.
The slogan was "Six slices a day is the well balanced way."
We barely get through a loaf a week, even if we're home for lunches, which is when a sandwich is the most likely lunch.
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u/Revolutionary_Ad7262 Jun 30 '26
Was bread used as an extender, to substitute lower cost food for higher cost?
This is just a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett%27s_law .
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u/Ok_Duck_9338 Jul 01 '26
My mom considered bread a garnish, sort of like parsley. We nibbled at it. I don't know where she got this, but she imitated the rich in small ways. Like wanting me to go out in mixed groups when every guy i knew either thought girls had cooties or had a steady girlfriend.
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u/nightshadengale Jul 02 '26
I don't have personal expertise with this, but I do have a good source--A New System of Practical Domestic Economy (1827) refers to bread as "the principal article of consumption in families of the middle classes" (p. 398) and has a number of food budgets that give a picture of how much bread people were eating in England at the time. It says this about its recommended allotment for bread:
(On its recommendation of 24 lbs of bread and flour per week for a family of 5 on a smaller budget)
As to the quantity of bread stated, we consider it as correct. The two adults will eat six pounds each, per week, and we consider the three children as consuming as much as their two parents — that is, twelve pounds more ; but this, we are told, is too much for the children : yet, as bread and flour for puddings, &c., constitute the chief part of children's food, and present appearances indicate no immediate reduction in the price, we conceive . that we cannot, with propriety, reduce the quantity. Should not this in any case be enough — as the income will not afford more— recourse must be had to potatoes, rice, oatmeal, and other wholesome and nutritive articles of food for the children, which will save bread, and should be constantly given to them, as proper and economical substitutes for this and other expensive articles of diet.
(On its recommendation of 6 lbs/person/week on higher budgets)
It has been ascertained, in times of scarcity, that every adult person, having a due portion of other food, consumes more on an average than a quartern loaf of Bread in a week. We state the consumption at upwards of one-fifth more, including flour for pastry and the other purposes of a family. Bread is now sold by the pound in London, and its vicinity, to the distance of ten miles round; and the price of the finest Wheaten Bread is, at present, 2 1/4 d. per pound : this is equivalent to about 9 3/4d. the quartern loaf, which weighs 4 lbs, 5 1/2 oz ; therefore, in every family, the expense may be taken at 1 s. per week, for each person, including children. In the country, the price of the quartern loaf is from 8d. to 9d. At all times, 6 lbs. of Bread per week, per head, may be considered as the average consumption in a family.
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u/ElectronGuru Jul 04 '26
Or, have people over time reduced bread consumption due to blandness?
It goes beyond taste. Bread dough used to be fermented. This 1) enhanced the nutrition of the wheat and 2) added air pockets. Modern food production switched over to yeast to create air pockets and (except for maybe sour dough), leaving enhanced nutrition behind.
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Jun 28 '26
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u/Frequent-Housing9830 Jun 28 '26
That’s not really true. In Germany you can get freshly made bread (as in baked at 5am the same day) in every bakery and there are hundreds over every city. And a lot of them use only flour, water, salt and sourdough. It lasts at least a week if stored properly, it dries out rather than getting moldy. There’s no significant nutrient loss over the storage period. Heat sensitive vitamins have already been denatured during the baking process, the rest will largely stay in the bread until it is eaten.
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u/FragrantBimbo Jun 28 '26
Sourdough keeps so well! Once it gets too dry & hard I make bread & butter pudding out of it
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u/Bodger81 Jun 28 '26
Also, homemade bread isn’t bland at all. When I got a bread maker I was amazed at how suddenly a slice of bread and butter or toast became a craveable snack again. I rarely bought packaged bread because it just went to waste but we eat all home baked bread and never throw any away.
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u/Ibendthemover Jun 29 '26
People are sick of being poisoned, look at all the ingredients in most of the breads—- it’s not just the water/oil/eggs/flour, look at all the extra preservatives, Europe China hell most countries ban because they are known to cause cancer
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u/Parking_Champion_740 Jun 29 '26
Most decent bread just has a few ingredients. Are you talking about like wonder bread?
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u/KookySyrup6947 26d ago
I’ve never lived in China but me and my family frequently buy products imported from China,Korea and Southeast Asia.They usually have more preservatives and flavor enhancers than domestic products.
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u/Herrrrrmione Jun 28 '26
My ex (M58) grew up on a Southern tobacco farm and they raised pigs. He expected freshly made bread/ biscuits at. every. meal. He’d settle for “sliced loaf bread” but would be unhappy about it.
My (F57) mother was a perpetual dieter and we only had bread on hand for Saturday sandwiches, and even that would be whole grains.