Store bought 100% Whole Wheat Bread Really?

No, just kidding (although the hamburger patty placed on the whole wheat bread could be pink slime).

I just scoured Pepperidge Farms website for ingredients for the 100% whole wheat. None to be found, but my Google-fu turned up:

• Whole Wheat Flour
• Water
• Crushed Wheat
• Sugar
• Wheat Gluten
• Honey
• Unsulphured Molasses
• Yeast
• Nonfat milk

And here's where it gets good:

• Soybean Oil
• Soy Fiber: Used to bulk up the fiber content of baked good. Add fiber to whole wheat bread?! Also extends shelf life, improves microwave heating capability for more uniformly heated products with less hot spots and softer texture when cooled, and contributes to better water absorption and water retention in baking.
• Salt
• Whole Wheat Flakes
• Datem (Dough Conditioner): Diacetyl tartaric esters of mono- and diglycerides used as emulsifiers to strengthen bread doughs and delay staling of the bread.
• Distilled Monoglycerides (More sugar!)
• Wheat Protein Isolate (All bread needs to build muscle, right? No, seriously: It's a byproduct of cheese. Used in industrial bread production to add protein, as it's easier to buy cheap low-protein flour in large quantity and dose it with protein isolate. Also used to strengthen gluten because high heat of industrial mixing denatures bread protein, and the "whey protein reacts the sulphydryl groups of the whey proteins, allowing them to form di-sulfide bonds, so they do not weaken the gluten structure." Low-carb diets pushed the sale of this stuff through the roof: remove some sugar and replace with "protein" and the "nutrition" label looks that much better to low-carb dieters.
• Calcium Propionate (Retards spoilage, a clever way of saying we added chemicals to kill mold. It's slightly toxic.)
• Soy Lecithin (Acts as an emulsifier, binding fats to liquids, in this case the soybean oil above to water. It's a natural product used as eggs are used in other enriched breads.)
• Enzymes (What enzymes? Who knows!)

I look at just about everything in a supermarket with deep skepticism, most especially those foods that make health claims.

Food Rules, A Eater's Manual by Michael Pollen

Rule 8. Avoid food products that make health claims.

This sounds counterintuitive, but consider: For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be a processed rather than a whole food. Then, only the big food manufacturers have the where-withal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world. Generally, it is the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often bad science. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to contain transfats that give people heart attacks. The healthiest food in the supermarket—the fresh produce—doesn’t boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don’t have the budget or the packaging. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

Rule 3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

Ethoxylated diglycerides? Cellulose? Xanthan gum? Calcium propionate? Ammonium sulfate? If you wouldn’t cook with them yourself, why let others use these ingredients to cook for you? The food scientists’ chemistry set is designed to extend shelf life, make old food look fresher and more appetizing than it really is, and get you to eat more. Whether or not any of these additives pose a proven hazard to your health, many of them haven’t been eaten by humans for very long, so they are best avoided.

As to the claim that modern food science has made it possible to feed the world, it's important to distinguish between between better crop yields (More grain!) and what food science does with the bountry (Bread can't stale! Just add chemicals! Bread can't mold! Just add chemicals! Whole wheat bread needs to be light and fluffy! Just add chemicals! Low-carb dieters won't eat it if they see the high carb count! Remove some carbs, replace it with protein isolate, thereby gaming the "nutrition" label, etc.).