Not long after WWII, my parents bought a little farm in northern Ohio. On Sundays, relatives would take a drive to the country from nearby Mansfield. One of them was my dad’s uncle, an osteopathic physician. I never knew his first name—they just called him “Doc.”

Doc always wanted to see how my mom’s garden was coming along and would take that opportunity to discuss the importance of fresh food and good nutrition. He also suggested she should bake her own bread.

Looking back, I think the rest of the family thought he was a little behind the times. After all, why go through the trouble when you could just buy Wonder Bread at the store? The ads promised it would “build strong bodies 12 ways.” 

It was a time of convenience. Babies were being bottle-fed rather than nursed. A Nickels Bakery truck delivered sugary pastries right to your door. Canning food at home was no longer a necessity when you could just pick up a can of soup, vegetables or beans at the market. Franco-American spaghetti was also very popular.

But Doc wasn’t convinced that processed foods were making life better. Even then, I think he worried about their impact on our health. 

My mom, a young nurse, had witnessed the miracle of penicillin firsthand. She made sure I got the shots that would spare me from polio. With the major illnesses of the day seemingly under control, who needed the extra work of baking bread?

After slogging through the Great Depression and World War II, America was entering a new era. 

Life was easier. Dinner could be as simple as popping a TV dinner into the oven and eating it on a tray in front of the television. Portions at dinner weren’t large, even in big families. My mother always had a stack of Wonder Bread slices on the table to add some calories for the eight of us.

People were still generally active. Most people weren’t sitting at desks all day unless they were in school. Kids spent their summers running around the neighborhood. 

It was a sweet spot in history. If you worked, you weren’t poor. You could afford a home, food, clothing and a car. Even in large families like ours, money had to be managed carefully, but few worried about not having a place to live. 

Life was good—but we were taught to keep “moving up” because it could always be better.

According to whom? Advertisers, of course.

Somewhere along the way, as a society, we lost sight of our greatest wealth—our health. The food industry learned how to manipulate our choices, engineering products with just the right mix of manufactured ingredients to keep us hooked on processed food.

I never really got to know Doc. We moved off the farm when I was 7. But I often wonder what he’d think about our collective state of wellbeing today.