>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.
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.