White bread is bread made from wheat flour from which the bran and germ have been removed, in contrast to whole wheat bread made from whole wheat flour, in which these parts are retained and contribute a brownish color. In addition, this white flour is generally bleached using potassium bromate or chlorine dioxide gas to remove any slight yellow color and make its baking properties more predictable.

The development of white bread was a response to the adaptation of the grocery business to modern commerce. Bleaching gives white flour a far longer shelf life than whole wheat flour, and bread made from it likewise has a longer shelf life. This allows it to survive the storage and long transit periods inherent in the modern world of commerce.

White bread is often criticised for being less nutritious than many other breads. Most of the vitamins inherent in wheat are removed along with the germ or destroyed in the bleaching process. In the United States, by law, white flour must be enriched with the addition of vitamins which replace most of the major vitamins removed by bleaching - though critics claim that valuable trace minerals removed by bleaching are not replaced in the enrichment process. Counter-arguments to this claim note that the amount of trace minerals in bread is minuscule to begin with and their supply is easily substituted by other common dietary constituents such as fruits and vegetables. In addition, most commercial white bread contains little dietary fiber when compared to bread which includes bran. A diet low in fiber is linked in some instances to cases of both constipation and diarrhea.

White bread is also criticized for being too easily digested by the human body, resulting in more drastic rising and falling of blood sugar and insulin levels than what results from eating slower-digesting whole grain breads. Blood sugar and insulin regulation provided by whole grains may prevent Type 2 diabetes.The Ottawa Citizen, March 4, 2006, Harvard School of Public Health's response to Health Canada's recommendation to consume enriched white flour

American bakers have attempted to respond to these criticisms with some modifications to their basic recipies and with the proliferation of a group of "specialty" bread products; many of these are essentially white bread with a few additives. Most commercial "whole-wheat" or "brown" bread produced in the U.S. is primarily composed of bleached white flour with the addition of enough brown flour to be brown in appearance. Bolted or "unbleached" flour has about 20% of its natural bran.

Other meanings

Whitebread is also used as a mild pejorative. While the term itself can suggest racist overtones, its most common usage simply refers to blandness or plainness in a person. Its usage is similar to the usage of the term vanilla in this context. In the DC comic book, Justice League International, the sarcastic Green Lantern Guy Gardner would often refer to his innocent, pure-hearted teammate Captain Marvel as ‘Captain Whitebread’.

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