Wonderbread nearly went belly up. Non-Atkins belly.
I am no fan of Wonder Bread. To my great good fortune I am the daughter of a dairy and bakery man. Childhood included Quaker Dairy produced milk, butter, ice cream, cottage cheese, sliced sandwich bread, flour topped hamburger rolls, swirled cinnamon loaves and donuts, all delivered early in the morning, although I believe ours came home with my dad at the end of a long days.
Truly, the world would be a better, more nourished – body and soul – place had Wonder Bread never come to be. While I have no hard facts, no statistics, no study data at my fingertips, I feel strongly that factory-produced, bottom-line driven food of any kind, and bread in particular in this diatribe, is, plainly put, bad. Not so plainly put, abominable, corrosive and a slap in the face to all preceding and subsequent dedicated bakers.
My two cents are utterly superfluous as Wonder Bread has taken its place in the culinary vernacular as dreck. The package, on the other hand, garners my complete respect. The dots entrance me.
The artist Linda St John has put the red dots of Wonder Bread to a use that deepens their authenticity, or perhaps embodies them with a hard scrap of authenticity. When Googled, Ms. St. John appears to be primarily an author. Having encountered her powerful 2 and 3 dimensional works long before reading her words, I would define her, with ragged edges, as an artist first. A compulsive and prolific artist who cuts tiny red buttons, at most 1/8-inch in diameter, from Wonder Bread bags. Buttons for fields of wavering girls. Wavering girls who appear to have been raised on foods purchased for the power of their visual bulk, a seeming bargain, such as Wonder Bread. It’ll fill you up. Not.
The Lunch Encounter 