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The development of white bread was a response of the adoption of the grocery business to modern commerce. Bleaching gives white flour a far longer shelf life than whole-wheat and other whole-grain flours, 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.

As long as it has existed, white bread has been condemned by dietary reformers as essentially devoid of nutritive value beyond the calories that it provides. Most of the vitamins inherent in wheat are destroyed in the bleaching process. Now, by law, white flour must be enriched with the addition of synthetic substitutes for most of major vitamins removed by bleaching; critics state that these substitutes are inferior and also that valuable trace minerals removed by bleaching are not replaced in the enrichment process.

In addition, most commercial white bread contains little dietary fiber. A diet low in fiber is linked in some instances to cases of both constipation and diarrhea.

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. (Indeed, most commercial "whole-wheat" or "brown" bread produced in the USA is primarily composed of bleached white flour with the addition of enough brown flour to be brown in appearance.)

"White bread" is also a slang term used in either a derisive or jocular manner to describe the culture which produced the literal product and/or its more avid consumers. It is usually a reference to conservative mainstream WASP culture as opposed to "cooler" subcultures.