What has happened to real bread? Where are the local bakeries? Instead we have mass-produced bread. This is not the staff of life, it is the bitter bread of sorrow.
I am constantly surprised that in a Christian society where sacred bread is central to the celebration of the Holy Communion, such a degradation of bread should be tolerated.
Lorries full of factory bread rush up and down the country on our motorways, polluting the air so that they can provide the nation with cheap bread. But we have paid a very high price for this cheap bread.
Bread is big business. Thirteen big manufacturers control the bread market worth over £3 billion a year. They sell nearly ten million loaves every day. Each loaf has traveled hundreds of 'bread miles'.
This bread is stale and sterile. It is so devoid of any life that bread manufacturers have to inject vitamins and minerals artificially into the bread they sell. They use enzyme-based ‘processing aids’ that by law don’t even have to appear on the label. Yet, with massive advertising, people have been fooled into believing that it is healthy.
One thing is certain: mass-produced bread provides less nourishment, has a lower nutritional value and has less taste than home-baked bread.
Gone are the days when we could walk to our local bakery and enjoy the sensual pleasure of seeing and smelling the freshly baked bread and chat with the baker and others from our neighbourhood. Now only 4% of bread is baked in small, neighbourhood bakeries, while 86% of bread is mass-produced.
This is why we are asking you to join the Resurgence Slow Sunday this weekend. We are inviting you to bake bread as an act of defiance against commercialism. For Resurgence Slow Sunday we are asking you to bake bread to save the planet.
It is by acting locally that we can start to address global issues like climate change. To find out more about Resurgence Slow Sunday go to www.resurgence.org/trust/slow-sunday.html
Special Offer. Buy a copy of Andrew Whitely's Bread Matters today for only £15 that's a 25% discount on the normal £20 retail price.
