All flour in the western world is fortified with vitamins, which is mandated by governements. This then filters through the entire food chain so pretty much any thing you eat has fortified ingredients in.

There is nothing bad about it, it is there to replace the natural vitamins and minerals removed in the milling process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_fortification#United_King...

> All flour in the western world is fortified with vitamins

All white/highly milled flour; there is no requirement for wholemeal flour to be fortified as nothing is being lost.

I found this out recently from the place I buy my wholemeal bread flour as they had a notice about the requirement, and that it doesn't apply to the wholemeal varieties they sell.

Like what exactly?

Like all kinds of industrial produced crap that it's better to not consume, with a health-washing badge about how they "contain vitamins" - from corn-flakes and energy drinks to "wonder bread", "Mentos gum with vitamins" and others.

Flour is produced industrially (and pre-industrially, in any case, it's heavily processed). Do you include that in your 'industrially produced crap'?

Flour is not that good for your diet to begin with, regardless of being produced industrially or not. The kind of crap supermarket breads popular in the US, doubly so.

But, to answer you question no, I make the common sense distinction, between food stuff produced at industrial scale, and "industrial produced crap", like things that involve preservatives, food additives, sweeteners, artificial coloring, hefty does of corn syrup, lab chemicals, and other such crap, which can range from the plain shitty ("wonder bread") to the spectaturaly shitty (sodas, gum, doritos, skittles, and on and on).

In other words, I don't fall for thought-stopping arguments like "Ackchyually, just so you know, water is a chemical too, so what's so bad with industrial food-stuff designed in a food chemistry lab vs grass-fed meat, fish, veggies, and fruits?"

Well, I have to say that German supermarket bread stacks up pretty well against so-called artisanal bread in many other parts of the world, and definitely against their industrial bread. (That's purely a judgement of taste and texture. I'm not making any health claims here.)

The German supermarket bread is obviously produced on an industrial scale to keep the costs down, but given the preferences of German consumers, the bread still gets enough time to ferment and there's no sugars nor shortening added. (One of our my goals here in Singapore is, funny enough, to recreate a 'normal' German bread, a so called Mischbrot, in my home kitchen.)

So it's not so much that industrial is bad, as that certain types of processing and ingredients are probably bad. I agree that especially corn syrup seems very suspicious, whether lovingly hand crafted or industrially produced.

>The German supermarket bread is obviously produced on an industrial scale to keep the costs down, but given the preferences of German consumers, the bread still gets enough time to ferment and there's no sugars nor shortening added

Yes, hence the distinction I made [between food stuff produced at industrial scale, and "industrial produced crap"]

OK, then we are mostly on the same page.

It's a bit sad, but many systems _do_ give people mostly what they want, be that for consumer goods or in politics. Even if it's not necessarily what they, in polite society, would admit to wanting.

Unfortunately a vast section of the population are are classed poor or in poverty, and so cant afford anything better than wonder bread. This is why fortified foods were introduced in the first place.

Its not a conspiracy to make you think that chemically created foods are as good as naturally produced unprocessed foods, its so that people who cant afford or dont have access to healthy natural food dont get deseases like rickets, spinal conditions, or other growth mutations which are common from malnutrition.

I feel like your argument has its heart in the right place, but is incredibly uninformed.

> Unfortunately a vast section of the population are are classed poor or in poverty, and so cant afford anything better than wonder bread. This is why fortified foods were introduced in the first place.

Supermarket bread in Germany is very cheap, and looks a lot less suspicious than 'Wonderbread'. (Never having had Wonderbread, I can't tell anything more past the looks.) I don't the poverty argument: the US is a lot richer than Germany.

German supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl aren't charities: obviously they also use industrial processes to make bread really cheap and turn a profit. But given consumer preferences in Germany, you get something that looks like this https://www.aldi-nord.de/produkt/krustenbrot-7256-0-0.articl...

It's 1.49 Euro for 1kg of bread.

I can believe that this style of bread would be a lot more expensive in the US. It certainly is where I am living now in South East Asia. But that's not because of poverty, but because without widespread demand for 'real' bread you don't have the scale necessary for industrial production to make sense.

(And it's not like stuff like Wonderbread is illegal in Germany. You can buy fluffy white bread just fine, too, if you really want it.)

>Unfortunately a vast section of the population are are classed poor or in poverty, and so cant afford anything better than wonder bread.

I don't think that's the case. Both because poor people, in countries with lower wages and higher cost of living, still buy regular bread, and also because in the US that shit is also consumed by not-so-poor and middle class families too.

>Its not a conspiracy to make you think that chemically created foods are as good as naturally produced unprocessed foods, its so that people who cant afford or dont have access to healthy natural food dont get deseases like rickets, spinal conditions, or other growth mutations which are common from malnutrition.

I doubt this as well, since the "with vitamins" badges are also on food that's way beyond necessary spending, from gum to expensive "high end" "healthy" cereal, all the way to power drinks that cost as much as a Starbucks latte.

I'm not talking about official state sponsored/mandated programs to add some beneficial substances to food stuff for the general population (which of course is good).

> I doubt this as well, since the "with vitamins" badges are also on food that's way beyond necessary spending, from gum to expensive cereal, all the way to power drinks that cost as much as a Starbucks latte.

Well, I guess that's just basic marketing? Vitamins are approximately free to add, and some people are more likely to buy stuff that makes vitamin health claims, while approximately no one dislikes vitamins enough to stop buying a product because of vitamins in it.

Vitamin Water.