Pure White Bread? Bleached Flour, Contestations, and Regulation in Great Britain, 1900-50

Why was bleaching-despite early concerns about this new food technology-left unregulated for over half a century? This article focuses on the processes developed to artificially whiten flour in the first half of the twentieth century. It shows how, instead of circumscribing adulteration to practices that they could identify precisely, most scientists in fact foregrounded the limits of their expertise and called for a precautionary approach when dealing with new food technologies and the attendant risks. Setting the British case within a more international context provides a window into the difficulties that regulatory regimes faced, narrowing their definition of adulteration to demonstrably harmful practices. This type of regime led to legitimizing the use of new, potentially dangerous products and processes and made further regulation much more complicated once these technologies became widespread.