ABSTRACT
By 1770, wheat bread had become the chief food of a majority (if only just) of the British people. Over the following century the annual volume of wheat bread consumption increased more than fourfold; its value increased more than fivefold.1 Roughly speaking, about three-quarters of volume growth represented (and permitted) the tripling of the national population during the century, the rest being due to the switch, in certain regions, from other grains and foods to wheat bread. From the 1870s on, thanks to the transformation of worldwide food production and distribution, the mass diet of Britain became more varied; bread gradually lost its singular importance as ‘the staff of life’, becoming one of, and often the mere accompaniment to, many foods. Whatever other, and less prosaic, labels might be attached to it, the century from 1770 to 1870 can be called ‘the age of the wheat loaf’.
