The place of bread in the diet

Throughout the world, consumption of the staple cereal has decreased as the standard of living has risen. This is illustrated for the long-term in Britain from a study of rough estimates for wheat flour and potatoes and firmer data for sugar going back to the eighteenth century. If supplies of foods are converted into their energy or calorie value, the contribution of each group of foods to the total can be calculated. Such a calculation for, Britain for 1880 and some intervening years until 1974 makes very clear that grain products were less than half as important in 1974 as they were in 1880 as a source of energy for the British people. Similar trends can be shown for the USA and other industrialised countries.