Real Bread Campaign review of 2024

Our annual look back at highs, lows and the general hike along the Real Bread Campaign trail.

January to March

Defra announced that it would be adopting the Campaign’s proposal to introduce a legal description of wholemeal for regulatory purposes. Following our intervention, Warburtons dropped the word ‘wholemeal’ from a product the company manufactures from 50% white flour. To offer people a way to continue supporting the Campaign, we introduced the choice of leaving a legacy.

Our 15^th annual, international Real Bread Week welcomed people from around the globe to the celebrations. We saw people getting involved in around 40 countries, with the #RealBreadWeek, #RealBreadCampaign and #RealBread hashtags being used more than 3,270 times on Instagram alone. In addition to the classes, bakery specials, tastings, homebaking and other activities that went on around the globe, the Real Bread Campaign organised or was involved in: Bankers for Bakers, a bread machine amnesty, Scottish Festival of Real Bread and Roots to Real Bread. 

We published the Bake Your Lawn grow-a-loaf guidebook to help teachers, (grand)parents, guardians and other youngster-wranglers to guide them in hands-on, soil-to-slice journeys. 

April to June

In anticipation of the general election, we published our Real Bread Manifesto of proposals for what the next government should do. 

We launched our search for a new batch of Campaign ambassadors. The process and invitation were designed to welcome and encourage applications from people of a diverse (in all senses) range of backgrounds, identities and relationships with Real Bread.

We also improved and relaunched the Real Bread Map, while our research revealed it's hard to find additive-free dried yeast in the UK.

July to September

A key set of investigations this year was into The (not so great) British Fake Off. By July, we had submitted supermarket ‘in-store bakery’ marketing complaints to the local authorities with Primary Authority relationships for trading standards with seven of the UK's ten largest chains (Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, The Co-op and M&S), and had begun investigating Waitrose.  

Morrisons admitted it was using the claim ‘made in store from scratch’ to market products that were not made in store from scratch, and promised to rectify this. Co-op confessed it was using the claim ‘freshly baked today’ to market ready-made, ‘thaw and serve’ products, and promised to stop making this inaccurate claim. 

It’s impossible to know how many people around the world participated in, and benefitted from, our 12^th annual, international celebration of genuine sourdough bread. One indicator is that the #SourdoughSeptember hashtag was used 1,742 times on Instagram alone, where we spotted posts from people in 45+ countries.

We welcomed around 300 people to our demo's and talk in the Theatre of Food at Latitude Festival. We also welcomed the new Minister and Secretary of State at Defra, asking to discuss our Honest Crust Act proposals.

October to December

We announced our latest batch of official Real Bread Campaign ambassadors. Collectively, they embody a range of backgrounds, identities and relationships with the rise of Real Bread, from home-based microbakers, to a school teaching assistant, to high street bakers and bakery owners, to a farmer who mills flour from wheat they grow. 

We began collecting inspiring examples, and finding potential partners, to develop a (hopefully) fundable Lessons In Loaf schools project. 

Flour ‘fortification’ exemptions, which we had supported, were introduced. While welcoming these, we see the review of the Regulations as a missed opportunity to introduce an Honest Crust Act of updated and improved composition, labelling and marketing standards.

We stepped up our work on encouraging people to make and eat more wholemeal Real Bread by publishing a (long-overdue) introduction to its benefits. The number of bakeries licensed to use The Real Bread Loaf Mark passed 150.

The trading standards officer investigating our complaint advised us that: ‘there are now no references to “freshly baked” in any of Lidl’s instore advertising materials or on their website.’ Sainsbury’s dropped a 'fresh bread' claim in some stores and Asda admitted its 'freshly baked daily' claim passed its use-by-date ‘years ago’.

The year ended with a month of planning ahead (such as looking for Lessons In Loaf funding, and working towards Real Bread Week) and continuing to pursue campaigning work, including our supermarket loaf tanning salon complaints, and Honest Crust Act lobbying.

See also

• Review of 2023
• The Real Bread Campaign turns fifteen
• Review of 2022
• Review of 2021
• Review of 2020
• Review of 2019
• Review of 2018
• Now we are ten