Bread in the US, and to be fair a lot of of supermarket bread in a lot of countries (UK, Australia, I'm sure tons of others) has a variety of ingredients added

Bread in the US, and to be fair a lot of of supermarket bread in a lot of countries (UK, Australia, I'm sure tons of others) has a variety of ingredients added to help keep the bread "fresh". It used to be common to buy fresh baked bread on a daily basis and only use it during that day, or perhaps a day or two afterwards. There are still some places in the Western world where this is common, for instance in Munich, Germany you can't walk more than a couple of blocks without finding a bakery with fresh bread for relatively cheap prices. In the US and UK fresh bread is now a luxury item and can be quite expensive compared to the bread laced with preservatives to keep the bread "fresh" for a couple of weeks.