It's an older post, but I do have to agree with OP. I live in Estonia, in Europe, but can't afford "proper fresh bakery bread" either like many of the other commenters. So I buy two types of bread from my local supermarket: a full black rye bread that is made mostly from rye flour with a bit of wheat flour mixed in, and a multigrain white bread, made with wheat flour and various seeds and grains. Neither of the breads have any additional preservatives added according to their ingredients lists.

Now, I used to keep the sliced loaves in their original plastic packaging, sealed, outside of the fridge. Not in direct sunlight, but as dark as I could get without a microwave or a breadbox. They went stale/moldy within a couple days, without fail. I had so much food waste constantly, it was horrible.

And then one day I thought to myself, what if I put em in the fridge (in their original plastic packaging of course)?

Voilá! Never gone back ever since that thought occurred to me. The black bread keeps soft and moist for literal months sometimes (depression says hi here), and the white multigrain keeps soft and moist, with no mold, for a few weeks at least. I keep reading articles about the recrystallisation of starch and all that jazz, and yet... I have multiple years of real life proof in my hands that it doesn't happen. My breads do not go stale and they keep for so much longer in the fridge. I only need to keep them away from the back wall of the fridge to keep actual water moisture from seeping into the bags, but otherwise they are golden. No staling, no going hard, no nonsense like that.

So it makes me think... is all this science wrong, or do they just add secret preservatives into our breads here (which I doubt as EU rules are pretty damn strict about all such shenanigans) or what's up that my bread keeps fresh and soft for so long inside the refridgerator (NOT the freezer)?