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This article makes it sound like a good thing, but bread made using the Chorleywood process is considered as ultra-processed food and studies shows that it can

• bogdan 6d ago
  Brits will pop up like snails in the rain to defend this god awful bread. They'll explain to you for the 15th time that it was a necessity back in the day, or how it's cheaper or faster to make or whatever reason they come up with in the moment. Fellow Brits, we know this, it's ok, it's 2026 the ration times are over. It's time to move on or accept reality.
  • Nursie 6d ago
    The reality is that the process is used all round the world these days (as covered in the article), not just in Britain, and its done that by being fast and cheap. It's also doubtful that it's any worse for you than American supermarket breads which are pumped full of sugar, emulsified oils etc etc. Frankly all the pre-processed, plastic-wrapped supermarket loaves can get in the bin as far as I'm concerned, I buy sourdough from the local farmers market. But that's significantly more expensive and I recognise it's a position of privilege.
  • moogly 6d ago
    Harsh but true. It's the same phenomenon as defending the BS 1363 power plug that needed an embedded fuse because their domestic postwar electrical wiring was Not Great -- to save on copper. But we all do this with our own stanky poop.
    • eru 6d ago
      The plug ain't too bad actually. (And I grew up with European style plugs.) Still a vastly better mechanical design than what they make you use in the US: they barely hold in the socket.
      • notahacker 5d ago
        Yeah BS 1363 is a really weird British standard to pick on, especially in a discussion about our food standards! Well engineered to actually stay in the socket, sockets have safety shutters as well as the earthing which other standards bizarrely lived without and it's not easily confused with a myriad of similar but incompatible standards. The fuse is a non-issue in practical use, and handy if your circuit is high current and your power cord isn't. People who prefer plugs that are fun to step on are doing electrical interfaces wrong!
        • exmadscientist 5d ago
          They're all horrid to step on, so that's not really worth discussing. The US plug (NEMA 1-15P is the 2-prong version, or 5-15P for the most common 3-prong grounded) is actually pretty decent. They stay in sockets pretty well if the sockets aren't bottom-of-the-barrel garbage products which, sadly, many things in the US are in general. What many people miss when comparing US and EU plugs are that they're actually doing fairly different jobs. The 120V mains in the US is significantly less trouble than the 240V in Europe, so you can get away with a lot less mechanically on the plug. The US NEMA 6-15P plug design (the 240V version of the standard plug) is, accordingly, kind of shit. But at least it's rare enough that receptacles tend to be of decent quality, which mitigates a lot. The locking versions (L5-15R etc) are actually quite good, and should almost always be used when possible and appropriate. They're good to 480V and even a bit beyond -- not just working but actually good -- and you can't say that about most EU plug designs. You guys have those horribly bulky pin-and-sleeve disasters and we get nice NEMA locking plugs for our three-phase. One of the other things that European plugs have to deal with, and US plugs don't, is that European electricians have no idea how to separate hot and neutral wires and basically wire them up randomly. This has major consequences in a lot of product design and is really really annoying when you're trying to build something safe. (Namely: in the US you're often (but not always) not allowed to fuse neutral wires. That makes sense, for safety reasons. You have to fuse hot... but in Europe you don't know which one is hot, so you have to fuse them both. Which means you just fused neutral. Design conflict!) That shows up in the plugs, too; with no idea where hot is, you have to be more careful and can't use neutral to help you out.
    • hnlmorg 6d ago
      As a Brit I will tell you that not all of us like this processed shit that passes for bread. However the plug is actually a really good piece of engineering. There’s so many subtle design features to it that can be genuinely life saving. The only drawback is the often cited problem of stepping on one, to which I say “you shouldn’t be leaving plugs on the floor anyway. And it’s still better that than having kids electrocute themselves or your house burning”
      • cineticdaffodil 5d ago
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      • chihuahua 5d ago
        The peak of British engineering was in the 1990s when I briefly lived there, and you could not buy small appliances with a plug attached. You got the bare wire, and you had to buy a separate plug, and connect it yourself at home. Of course, any rational British person would instantly understand that the best way to ensure safety is to have every single person wiring up every single plug in their house.
        • hnlmorg 3d ago
          That’s a gross over exaggeration. Most electrical equipment did come with a plug. The white appliances that didn’t was because they were kitchen appliances that either wired into a separate ring, or the wire had to be threaded through small gaps in the kitchen cupboards. For that last point, I’ve often ended up cutting the plug off new kitchen appliances, thread the cable, then wire a new plug afterwards.
        • Symbiote 5d ago
          The law changed in 1994 requiring appliances to be sold with the plug attached.
          • jimmythefish 4d ago
            Mostly I’m happy about that, but you can’t remove the plug from dead appliances anymore and keep it (along with the 48 other “spares”) now they are all moulded plastic.
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    • ErroneousBosh 4d ago
      > defending the BS 1363 power plug that needed an embedded fuse because their domestic postwar electrical wiring was Not Great Where would you put the fuse, then? Also, if you think that's "Not Great", just take a look at the concentrated pile of sketchiness that passes for domestic wiring in the US. Every single house in the US is an electrical fire waiting to happen - and with "balloon frame" construction which is purpose-designed to both reduce construction costs and ensure the complete destruction of the building with even a minor fire, you've got plenty for that to work with.
      • tetromino_ 3d ago
        > Where would you put the fuse, then? In the electrical panels, of course. You'd only need fuses in the plug if you wired up your home with a braindamaged topology like a ring circuit. (Alas, ring circuits are very common in British home wiring.)
        • ErroneousBosh 3d ago
          > In the electrical panels, of course. So how do you know what size to fit? Or do you just get in about your panels and replace them every time you unplug a lamp to plug in a TIG welder?
          • tetromino_ 3d ago
            You'd have a dedicated outlet on a dedicated circuit for the TIG welder. In North America, that dedicated outlet would have a different physical plug shape than your lamp, so as to avoid confusion. Of course, if in the UK you use exactly the same plug shape for both lamp and welder, I can see how that could be unsafe...
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  • d1ss0nanz 6d ago
    "separate taps for cold and hot water" (even in public places)
    • micv 5d ago
      I don't really understand this either. Mixer taps are just better, but I have separate taps in my bath tub despite the block of houses being built in the 2010s. Guess some people like the aesthetic.
      • funnybeam 5d ago
        Probably not in your bath, but in houses with water tanks at least one of the cold taps will be fed directly from the mains supply. If you are drinking it then you want it straight from the mains rather than from the tank in your loft that’s been sat there for a while and had all sorts of things falling into it
        • userbinator 5d ago
          but in houses with water tanks This is another big surprise to Americans, which went from no running water to high-pressure mains.
      • rsynnott 5d ago
        ... Huh. So, these seem to have totally died out in Ireland, despite us changing the rules on mixers at about the same time as the UK did (Irish plumbing and electrical rules tend to follow UK ones). You'll see them in old installations, but more or less never in modern ones (even modern antique-stylised plumbing has anachronistic mixer taps). Hadn't realised that they were still a thing in the UK.
  • noelwelsh 6d ago
    It's slightly depressing how much better the everyday food is just some 300kms east of London (i.e. in France). I was shocked the first time I pitched up in a random Carrefour and saw that their basic food is an essentially unobtainable level of quality in the UK. British food has come a long way over time, though there is still that subculture the rejoices in shite, or "proper" as they call it, food. At least we can feel superior to the US on this front, who produce the worst bread I've ever eaten.
    • ndsipa_pomu 6d ago
      > It's slightly depressing how much better the everyday food is just some 300kms east of London (i.e. in France) Do you mean south of London?
      • noelwelsh 5d ago
        Would south east do? Is further pedantry necessary?
        • ndsipa_pomu 5d ago
          I'll accept south-east. I'm glad we're not describing the relationship between Greenland and Iceland as Greenland is farther east, west, north and south of Iceland.
        • SECProto 5d ago
          I'd note that south or southeast would work, even southwest might. But East would clearly lead to the Netherlands. (they may also eat better bread there too, I wouldn't know)
    • dofm 5d ago
      French supermarket baguettes are very often Chorleywood.
    • ddellacosta 5d ago
      USian here, guilty as charged. Although I imagine it's the same as in the U.K. in terms of a lot of people who eat a lot of crap, while there are still plenty of people who know and appreciate good food, including baked goods. So, there is good bread here, but either you make it yourself or pay a premium.
  • dofm 5d ago
    Right, but that is because it essentially was a necessity. Its fortification also aided in the developmental health of generations of children. Snark about it all you like; it was valuable. People in fact don't eat dull white sliced bread in anything like the quantity they did. The majority of bread sold might be like that but we just eat less bread full stop. But first, when you say "this godawful bread", what exactly do you mean? Chorleywood is a process, not an outcome. It's not just the template pre-sliced white/wholemeal/brown loaf thing from the three big brands. Quite a lot of bread you might think is not Chorleywood essentially is. Go to even a larger French supermarket and buy a baguette, and that will very likely be a Chorleywood-based process. Much in-store-bakery bread is a modified Chorleywood process (if it is not, it is another similarly "ultra-processed" method, apparently called Activated Dough Development). Most supermarket "sourdough type" bread, even some quite expensive stuff, is a modified Chorleywood process. Most ciabatta are. I don't really eat "cut loaf" bread anymore for quite immediate health reasons — it invariably causes acid reflux and then skin irritation, so I gave it up a long time back. But I do still eat the odd part-baked bread roll and even some of those are Chorleywood process. There is a good chance that if you're in a posh café you're still eating a Chorleywood-type bread. Because it is a way of making bread at scale; it is not a single product outcome.
    • gjm11 5d ago
      > Most supermarket "sourdough type" bread, even some quite expensive stuff, is a modified Chorleywood process. Most ciabatta are. I assume this is one reason why most supermarket "sourdough type" bread is, well, not good. (Sure, it's better than the cheapo sliced-white stuff. There's a lot of space between that and actually-good.) I don't claim to know for sure that no bread made with Chorleywood-type processes is good. I am fairly sure, though, that no bread I've had that I have good reason to suspect was made that way has ever been much good. (One specific complaint: It tends to have crumb that lacks elasticity. If you try to spread anything fairly thick on it -- soft cheese, say -- it tears and crumbles.If I do the same thing with one of my own loaves, the crumb flexes but doesn't tear or disintegrate. This isn't the only thing I find unsatisfactory about even supposedly fancy supermarket bread, but it's a thing I can describe fairly explicitly rather than just waving my hands and saying "well, it's just not good, you know?".)
  • Angostura 5d ago
    I’m not sure that’s true. I’m old enough to remember the great British bread strike of 1977 https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11045641.look-back-chaos-caused-1977-bakery-workers-strike-queuing-droves-loaves/ https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11045641.look-back-chaos-c... One of the effects of the strike was that white sliced was in short supply and mangled people ended up with weird granary loaves etc as they were all that was left in the shelves. They liked them. And from that day granary and seeded breads became a lot more popular over the bland spongy white sliced stuff. I will say that whatever the failings of white sliced, I still prefer it to over-sweetened US bread.
• mweibel 6d ago
  yes, long fermentation reduces fodmaps in breads which in turn makes it better digestable (plus it just takes better).
  • cineticdaffodil 6d ago
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  • throw-qqqqq 5d ago
    This is true, but I want to add that FODMAPs are not inherently bad for you (unless you have something like IBS), on the contrary! Fermentable carbohydrates are prebiotics and feed your gut flora, which produces short-chain fatty acids that are healthy for you. But yes, you also get gas from FODMAPs. And no, I am not advocating for processed foods - just wanted to comment on the FODMAP aspect.
• anonzzzies 6d ago
  I cannot really think of worse bread than pret or that first picture garbage. It's just so horrible compared what I bake at home, but sure, you can keep it for 40 years and it'll still be the same. Apparently people value that over their colon health.
• Nursie 6d ago
  > This article makes it sound like a good thing At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. Now we know the consequences perhaps it's time to rethink. > causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty. How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
  • boudin 6d ago
    > At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. That's just not true. It allowed to industrials using british wheat to compete against industrials using canadian wheat. Another approach could have been to protect artisan baker instead of going all in with the industrialisation of food production. > How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit? Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive and small bakers can compete with industrials.
    • Nursie 6d ago
      > That's just not true. It's right there in the article, in the postwar years the UK was reliant on imported Canadian and other wheats, the process allowed the UK to use its own wheat. "Artisan" bread was not a thing in the early 1960s, AFAICT at that point in time Britain had an extremely impoverished food sector. > Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive France seems to be a bit of an outlier here AFAICT. But is 'real' bread even that expensive in the UK? Look, you can get a 24hr sourdough loaf at Tesco for 2 quid - https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/272914228 https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/272914228 - or 3.75 for the 800g version. And you can tell it's not chorleywood because there's no Ascorbic acid or added oils. Real bread is available at any given supermarket if you want it. If your real complaint is "Why don't we have France's bakery culture?" well I think that goes a lot deeper.
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• bryanlarsen 5d ago
  AFAICT the two processing steps that have the most impact are the super fine milling that is used to create modern flour, and the removal of the bran from the flour. Those are likely the same whether you have Chorleywood bread or homemade 4 ingredient bread. I suspect that Chorleywood bread made with stone ground whole wheat flour is better for you than home made four ingredient white bread. (with the caveat that Chorleywood probably doesn't work with such flour).