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From WBNS 10-TV:
Columbus Wonder Bread Bakery To Close In May
The Wonder Bread bakery located just north of downtown on North Fourth Street will shut down operations and cease production by May 9. Interstate Bakeries Corporation (the parent company of Wonder Bread) said that local developments, including the decline of bread purchases, prompted the latest round of closures.
I know I’m in the tiniest minority here, but man, I actually hate that smell. I resent stepping out of doors and having my blood sugar go haywire just ’cause I’m breathing.
BUT!! I will say that although I’m mostly a whole-wheat gal, ya can’t beat a good old PB and J on Wonder Bread, and I’m very sorry to hear of the folks losing their jobs.
Well, c’mon, now. Joev’s got a point. Value isn’t just a function of the price you pay at the checkout counter. One message that’s becoming clearer over time is that our incessant drive, as consumers, for cheaper and cheaper food, and the ingenuity of corporate food entities in meeting that desire, ends up having a big long-term price in terms of health. HFCS in soft drinks is cheaper than sugar, white bread produces spikes in blood sugar that prompt fat storage, all of which raises rates of obesity and the odds of type II diabetes… etc., etc.
And it’s not so much that people can’t read the labels. They can, but it’s not obvious to all consumers that these processed starches and carbs are as bad for you as they are. And health information seems hazy and uncertain, and health implications can seem a long way away, whereas a ten-cent difference in the price of a loaf of bread is a cold hard fact in the here and now.
I’m not blaming Wonder, or advocating a return to the hearth. But it’s precisely the concept of value that we need to rethink. If something costs a little less at the checkout counter but ends up giving you diabetes and taking ten years off of your life and leaving you legless and blind, I would contend that you’d get a better value out of spending the extra dime.
So your argument is that my philosophical reasoning isn’t the tops – point taken.
I don’t think my original statement is outrageous or outlandish – all I was trying to do was to quanitfy my ambivalence with the closing of the factory. I think it sucks for the workers; but I like that Wonder Bread is not as profitable as it once was.
+1 Joev
What year is it??? I thought everyone knew how bad white bread is &stripped down of pretty much all nutritional value. Hmm??? The American diet has revolved around these type of empty foods and left us fat& unhealthy. I better dig up my old Nutrion text books to find evidence to support the obvious though ;)
I lived a stone’s throw from this factory though for over ten years& do not want to see anyone lose their jobs. That does suck. I do hope people are choosing better foods, but doubt this is evidence of that idea.
I personally think white bread is delcious and prefer it over wheat. And yes it can be a perfectly fine part of your diet when you eat other stuff besides all bread all the time and do some exercise.
As far as value, all i mean is it accomplishes what its there for. Its cheap, readily available bread, of a decent taste (personal opinion), can fit into a healthy lifestyle, and is real easy to make sandwiches with.
The year is 2009, and people should still be able to be smart and eat wonder bread if they want to. Its not an either/or. And if they can’t, then they have bigger problems in their lives at the moment and need to look beyond the loaf of bread they bought at the store to start finding some real solutions.
Not only will Columbus miss the aroma, but this will cost the area between 70 and 126 jobs (depending on whether you believe the Dispatch or NBC4). While Columbus’ tent cities are nowhere near as bad as, say, Sacremento’s, we can ill afford to keep losing businesses and industries.
The year is 2009, and people should still be able to be smart and eat wonder bread if they want to. Its not an either/or. And if they can’t, then they have bigger problems in their lives at the moment and need to look beyond the loaf of bread they bought at the store to start finding some real solutions.
LOL
Sounds like you have a real grasp on what is considered a healthy diet. Keep working out& good luck with that ;)
Is there really a tent city here?
To me, that factory was a landmark in this city. The first time I drove by the factory, smelled the bread, and saw that wonderful neon sign, I thought… damn, maybe I can live in this town. It was kind of symbolic to me… my impression of Columbus at first view was well, “white-bread”, and that big neon sign over the city seemed a bit ironic. Like the city had a sense of humor. And as I began to get a better sense of the city and all its unique qualities, the factory remained a beacon… smell the bread baking on my return to town from a vacation. It always felt homey and welcoming. A nice contrast to the hip Short North, and the skyline of downtown.
This news saddens me very much… more so knowing that hardworking people will be out of work.
If we all start eating the ‘hearty breads of our grandparents’ all the time…we will actually get fatter than we already are. One of the reasons why those breads were made so hearty and heavy is that two pieces of bread accounted for nearly 1/2 the calories a person was going to eat in an entire day due to the general state of poverty of much of the US population back in those days (early 1900′s).
***I will definitely miss the smell.***
not to mention the difference in calorie burning of a person back then compared to the sedentary cube dwelling population of now. IIRC, people back then walked up hill both ways for everything. ; )
Your grandparents are way older than mine.
as for the smell/aroma – Kroger actually has a bakery on Cleveland Ave just north of 670 that produces the same aroma. So it’s not always wonder bread giving free smells on the highway!
but this saddens me. i lived next door to the wonder bread sign for my first 4 years in Columbus, and actually have wedding photos in front of the neon sign and the ‘home of the wonder fresh guy’ mural on 4th. i hope the IV can do something to protect the neon sign as some sort of architectural landmark. i would hate to see the light go out.
Well, a big difference is what you get for those calories. Wonder Bread is pretty empty calories. Real, honest-to-God actual bread has a pretty good nutritional profile stacked up with those calories, not to mention fiber.
And flavor ;)
But whatevs. To each their own. At least we have bread.
As a member of a family that has owned a bread bakery for 3 generations up until May, I never quite understood how Wonder Bread called it baking. Chemical bread is more like it. I hate to hear about the workers losing their jobs though.
I like how people bash the bread I mean wonder did make a whole grain.
But I bet y’all drink beer huh? That will make you fat as well and you consume more of that in a sitting then bread so.. there are no rights and no wrongs really.
+1
I really hope that they make sure the sign stays. I’ve seen tons of cool pictures of it (and have taken a few, whether they qualify as cool or not is debatable.) It would be a real shame to have it disappear.
i was gonna say, its not just wonderbread your smelling. kroger has a huge bakery on cleveland where they not only make bread but corn chips.
Well, one hopes that this isn’t the end of the story. In happier times, the company might well have invested in retooling a plant like that for new product lines (keep in mind that the reason this is closing is that it’s an older factory incapable of handling a shift to what appears to be a healthier product line). Hopefully it won’t stay empty for too long. Perhaps another local/regional bakery company will find a use for it (Nickles’, Schwebel’s, etc.).
I have no idea what condition it’s in on the inside, but judging by everyone’s accounts of the smells, it’s at least operational. That means it ought to have at least some value as a marketable asset, which could likely be acquired on the cheap in this market.
As to whether it’s a good idea to be eating white or wheat bread, well, it’s been a long, long time since I had anything on Wonder Giant (when did they stop with the “Big,” anyway? That was funny), and I buy mostly multi-grain and high fiber breads when I shop for myself, but I don’t presume to dictate others’ diets. After all, I might not eat white bread, but I’ll occasionally indulge in one of Wonder’s muffin loaves, and those things have more calories than a tank of rocket fuel.
Every time I come out of class at CSCC in the afternoons, the area smells of donutty goodness.