added nutrition in whole grains tends to pass through the body unabsorbed. For some body types and diets, white flour may have been a nutritional benefit. Once it could be easily produced, it went from the most expensive to among the cheapest kinds of flour. It can last longer. The wheat oil in whole grain breads can go rancid over time, spoiling its flavor. However, there was a backlash from the popularity of white flour, giving rise to whole grain alternatives popular to this day, such as graham crackers and corn flakes, which (in their original whole grain form) have more fiber and micronutrients. Eventually, the transformation of white bread from an elite to a common foodstuff became symbolic of the success of industrialization and capitalism in general, especially paired with the advent of machine sliced bread in the 1920s. White bread has remained the most popular type of bread in the US and much of the industrialized world, despite a generational cycle of backlash against it. White bread fortification While a bran- and wheatgerm-discarding milling process can help improve white flour's shelf life, it does remove nutrients like some dietary fiber, iron, B vitamins, micronutrients and essential fatty acids. The US government has mandated since 1941 fortification of white flour-based foods with some of the nutrients lost in milling, like thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and iron. This mandate came about in response to the vast nutrient deficiencies seen in US military recruits at the start of World War II. This fortification led to nearly universal eradication of deficiency diseases in the US, such as pellagra and beriberi (deficiencies of niacin and thiamine, respectively) and white bread continues to contain these added vitamins to this day. Folic acid is another nutrient that some governments have mandated is added to enriched grains like white bread. In the US and Canada, these grains have been fortified with mandatory levels of folic acid since 1998 because of its important role in preventing birth defects. Since fortification began, the rate of neural tube defects has decreased by approximately one-third in the US. Folic acid supplementation was mandated in the UK in September 2021, joining more than 80 countries in the world with this public health measure. See also Brown bread, a bread that was considered undesirable in early-19th-century Europe Chorleywood bread process, another common process for mass-produced bread Flour treatment agent Graham bread, an early