The Soul of Sliced Bread and Breakfast Cereal

An area where psychoanalysis still holds sway is eating disorder therapy. Moms can transfer neurosis to children through the way they manage the child’s diet. I have no particular knowledge of the intricacies of this problem--I’m fortunate to have not been touched myself or within my close family by this disease--but in reading Ernest Dichter’s marketing research, I have a new interest in how my mother managed her kitchen.

I think my mom was fairly tidy in her packaging of my school lunchbox, but there were times I could tell she was falling in a rut. After three straight months of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips, I was bored to death with lunch. I think we came to a mutual agreement that it would be better for us both if she just gave me a lunch allowance to eat from the school cafeteria.

According to Dichter in Handbook of Consumer Motivations (he’s writing about 1950s homemakers) moms take special care in packing their children’s school lunches. “Food wrappings are a demonstration of the concern and affection in which the members of the family are held. . . .Women respondents wrapped the package in a certain way to make sure that it was secure. Many women would run their hand over it. They would do it several times. It was as if they could seal the wrap by the magic of touch. Among other respondents it was noted that when they had finished wrapping an item, they tended to square the package. These homemakers felt that the better the shape of the package was, the more securely it was wrapped.”

Through my mother’s example, I have always had brand loyalty to Mrs. Baird’s white bread. It’s been banned from my home for twenty years or so as an empty carb food, but if I were to buy a loaf of white bread, I would buy Mrs. Baird’s.

Anyone who grew up in the Dallas area knows that Mrs. Baird was a grandmother who baked bread and delivered it in a buggy. Many of us children toured a Mrs. Baird’s baking plant as a field trip within scouts or some similar children’s activity. We remember the wonderful aroma of the plant and getting to eat a slice from a fresh baked loaf covered in melted butter.

The Baird boys, I’m sure, had a marketing department that helped establish the “image” (Dichter’s term) of the product. They were pleased with the nostalgic grandma image and also approved and maintain today the advertising line that Mrs. Baird’s “continues the tradition of hand twisting each loaf of bread, a special commitment to quality.” According to one Dichter study, consumers “preferred bakeries where workers did touch the dough and where the bakers acted as if they were baking bread for themselves at home.” Robotic man hygienically covered to prevent his germs from contaminating food product at Lubbock Mrs. Baird's plant

Mrs. Baird’s is now owned by Bimbo Bakeries. I can imagine the owners eating lunch at their country club and fretting over the regional baking business. My recommendation to them is that they buy machines to twist the bread, give the poor man above a decent job, and lay off several of their marketing dick executives to pay for it.

The sale to Bimbo was tied to misbehavior of Vernon and Carroll--Ninnie would have been ashamed of them. http://www.answers.com/topic/mrs-baird-s-bakeries?cat=biz-fin

Other fifties moms preferred breads like Wonder Bread and Sunbeam that promised energy from space-age nutrients. Breakfast foods, too, promised powerful ingredients to provide strength. Regarding breakfast, my mom fit Dichters’s observation that at breakfast not only do we need to “replenish the sources of our bodily energy physically,” but psychologically, breakfast is “ a rehearsal for coming battles, a stocktaking of our resources and a tuning of our senses to the world at large.” We want crunchy cereals because we “look upon breakfast as a sort of adversary that has to be conquered.” For those of a less pugilistic spirit (I’m one of these), we prefer crunchy cereals rather than mushy soft cereals because crunchy cereals “fulfill our tactile curiosity. You can play with cereals in an oral fashion. They have interesting shapes that can be cracked with a snap, crackle and pop.”

Kellogg's Frosted Flakes' endorsement by Superman matches Nike's use of Michael Jordan, but probably at a much smaller cost.

For more about the gender of cereals and sandwiches, including Rice Krispies, see this article.

According to Dichter, "the future trend will not be a supermodern pattern of “atom-powered” cereals. The truly modern cereal will combine all the warmth and affection of the substantial old-fashioned cereal with the fun, lightness, and convenience of modern dry cereal.” (He was right on target here.)

Many of the fifties families in my neighborhood could be classified as lower middle class restrictive or lower middle class expansive. (Click here to see previous blog on fifties suburban social classes.) Use of sugar at breakfast may be a litmus test of our families’ social class. According to Dichter, “sugar is a conflict product. We need it and want it and at the same time we are often afraid of it. . . . Every time the housewife reaches for a package of sugar, . . . she is subject to conflicting feelings of varying intensity.” Moms can basically be classified as sugar hedonists, sugar moderates, or sugar puritans.

I commend my mother (who has never had a weight problem) for being a sugar hedonist, but doing it in such a way that it was no big psychological deal. Despite her Twinkie- and cookie- and Coke-filled cupboards, I’ve always been able to stay away with no effort from all sugar-based, refined products.