A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from June 21, 2013
“The whiter your bread, the sooner you’re dead”

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead” is a saying that was started in the Daily Mail (London) on July 21, 1924. The saying (also given as “the quicker you’re dead”) has been frequently used to get people to eat other breads, such as multi-grain bread.
 
American radio personality R. P. L. Clark announced over a Chicago radio station in 1928: “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead; The whiter the flour, the sooner the flowers.”
 
   
9 August 1924, The Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), pg. 5, col. 1:
WHOLEMEAL BREAD.
(From the London Daily Mail of July 21.)
The whiter your bread
The sooner you’re dead.
 
16 August 1924, Manitowoc (WI) Herald-News,  “British Doctors Urge Safer Dietary Habits” by Milton Bronner (NEA Service Writer), pg. 10, col. 2:
LONDON, Aug. 16.—“The whiter your bread
The sooner you’re dead.”
 
It isn’t exactly a very enlivening or gay thought, but it is the rather concise way in which the newspapers, spurred on by the doctors, have been putting things to the London public.
 
18 November 1925, Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, pg. 18, col. 7 ad:
THE WHITER YOUR BREAD
THE SOONER YOU’RE DEAD
With these lines the London Daily Mail begins at attack on the use of white bread.
(...)
GARLITS HEALTH FOOD STORE
 
5 April 1926, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), “Our Daily Bread,” pg. 12, col. 2:
Often do we hear such terms as these, “If you want to die of cancer eat white bread,” or again, “The whiter your bread the sooner you are dead.”
   
Google Books
Liberty
Volumes 23-30
1928
Pg. 96:
“The Whiter the Bread”
R. P. L. CLARK, broadcasting over a Chicago radio station, said: “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead; The whiter the flour, the sooner the flowers.”
 
Examiner.com
The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead: which foods promote diabetes?
February 5, 2010
By: Anne Hart
A big slice of white bread will spike your blood sugar. Whole wheat bread also will raise your blood sugar.
     
Whole Grains Council
White Bread: A Book Review
April 23, 2012
hesitated when Beacon Press offered to send me a copy of their recently-published book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. Why would someone like me, who’s passionate about whole grains, want to read a book about white bread?
(...)
The oft-repeated slogan “The whiter your bread, the quicker you’re dead” was coined by radio personality Dr. P.L. Clark.

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityFood/Drink • Friday, June 21, 2013 • Permalink


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