From the Baker's Oven to the Broken Chain

Picture a mother, a few generations back. She grows wheat on her own land. She grinds it, makes dough, bakes bread in her own oven, and feeds her children with it. The whole chain, from seed to slice, lives in one pair of hands, and the quality control is the oldest one in the world: her own kids eat the result.

Now picture the same loaf today. A farmer grows the wheat. A mill grinds it. A factory turns flour into dough. Another factory turns dough into par-baked loaves, frozen and stacked. A supermarket "bakery" finishes them in an oven operated by a student with a timer. And at the end of it stands the same mother, or father, still trying to feed a family. The love that once went into the loaf has been replaced, link by link, by something else: each company's perfectly rational drive to optimise its own fraction of the chain.