This British Supermarket Is Going to Stop Selling White Bread

We all love a poppy seed-studded loaf of organic rye (£8, mate) and that sourdough you spent weeks cultivating a starter for goes great with smashed avocado but sometimes, only the most basic, human hair-filled, preservative-pumped white bread will do.

Imagine a hungover bacon sandwich without the casing of gummy carbohydrate. Cheese on toast that leaves you with seeds in your teeth. A crisp sandwich constructed with anything that costs more than 70p a loaf.

It's no way to live.

But Marks & Spencer don't seem to agree. The British supermarket has announced that it will be fortifying its entire pre-packed bread range with extra fibre. From April, the store's loaves will all contain at least 3 grams of fibre per 100 grams.

Basic white bread just got a little less basic.

Marks & Spencer defended its decision to beef up the fibre count in its loaves as a response to growing customer demand for "bread with benefits."

The supermarket's product developer Jenny Galletly said: "The days of the simple white loaf are numbered. We're now adding fibre to all our bread, including white, to make a healthier bread for all the family.

Indeed sales of white bread are at their lowest level in a decade, with the UK's three largest bread brands reporting a loss of £121 million in sales in May last year. This could be down to the 14 percent decline in children taking packed lunches to school—as well as perhaps the fact that most of us would rather not eat stuff that makes you depressed.

Galletly added: "By using a vitamin D yeast and adding fibre to our breads and bread rolls, we're helping our customers boost their intake without having to make big changes to their diet."

While Marks & Spencer is the first UK supermarket to introduce such a fibre policy, they're not the only ones attempting to pimp the humble white loaf. As industry news site Bakery and Snacks reports, bread manufacturer Hovis recently rolled out a new range of "Good Inside" loaves with added fibre and flax seeds in an attempt to snare the fibre-conscious consumer.

The assault on white bread hasn't been welcome by everyone. Women's magazine ELLE pined "Is white bread over?" and food writer Felicity Cloake defended the picky school child's carb of choice, writing in the Guardian: "White bread has a taste, and a texture all of its own, and some things, crisp butties and bacon sarnies among them, just wouldn't be the same without it."

Come back white bread, we're sorry we ever doubted you.