Remembering When America Banned Sliced Bread | Hacker News Reader

Remembering When America Banned Sliced Bread

atlasobscura.com

38 pointsbookofjoe55 comments

How about banning yellow margarine? That wasn't a wartime rationing thing but a concession to the dairy lobby.

A nice podcast episode on margarine. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/i-cant-believe-its-pi...

I'm with the dairy lobby on this one

I never got the point of pre-sliced bread. What's so hard about slicing bread yourself?

Classic HN. Can you really not conceive any benefits? Is your imagination so limited that it does not extend to seeing that other people have different use cases to you? Yes there are clearly drawbacks, but there are obvious benefits.

For me, with three children that take sandwiches to school for lunch, it's all about convenience. I don't need one more minor complication getting them ready each day.

Some well meaning advice: being able to put yourself in other people's position, seeing from their perspective is an invaluable life skill. It is extremely useful in personal and professional settings, and it is very worthwhile to develop.

>Classic HN. Can you really not conceive any benefits? Is your imagination so limited that it does not extend to seeing that other people have different use cases to you?

[...]

>being able to put yourself in other people's position, seeing from their perspective is an invaluable life skill.

Indeed. I thought the same thing when reading all the comments regarding the Apple and SpaceX announcements regarding satellite communications on ordinary phones stating "Who needs this? I'm never going to be anywhere outside cellular service!" Good grief.

The reasons are too many to list, there's a reason we have a saying "best thing since sliced bread".

>What's so hard about slicing bread yourself?

* Have to get out a cutting board and knife

* Have to clean the cutting board and knife (oh wait-- my cutting board is at the bottom of my sink full of dirty dishes...guess this 30 second lunch is turning into a ten minute one...)

* Don't forget to clean up the crumbs that spilled everywhere including the floor when you cut the bread. Go find that broom from wherever it is around the house

* Small chance to cut yourself

* What if you don't have a knife to begin with?

* What if your small child is making themself a meal? What are the chances they cut themself?

* Pre cut bread is even widths, smoothly cut

Multiply all these troubles by two if you're frail...

I have cutting board for my bread (and associated knife) that's always out next to the toaster. And since I only ever cut bread on it, I rarely need to clean it.

Bread crumbs are produced just as readily produced by sliced bread and getting even cuts isn't hard if you're doing it every day.

Though at the end of the day, it's down to a matter of taste and considering how I can very easily get bread that's miles better than any sliced bread I've tasted, for me it's easily worth the hassle.

We must be eating very different types of bread then because slicing bread produces way more crumbs than pre sliced by a considerable margin and always has. Main reason I buy sliced bread, really.

Based on this article, I now believe the reason we say "best thing since sliced bread" is purely marketing. The (apparent) originator of sliced bread seems to have called it "the best thing since wrapped bread", and I guess that's saying something?

Anyway, your points are fine, but surely being made to slice your own bread isn't the end of the world. The outcry depicted in this article gives me hope/despair that there is nothing new about reddit-style whining about everything.

It shows that you've never seen or used a Brotschneidemaschine

That makes all the risk from sharpness much more intense.

And I still have to keep it somewhere and keep it clean.

I'm happy letting someone put the bread through that before I take it home.

It's worth noting that in the 1940s, gender roles were more segregated and families were bigger than they are today.

_Wives_ were expected to make breakfast and lunch for their husbands and their children; the fine article itself contains an anecdote of one woman being expected to slice 22 slices every morning, by hand, with one knife.

It's amusing how far the pendulum has swung the other way -- in 2020 instant yeast was in short supply so folks made sourdough starters, but there was plenty of flour (and bread knives - which now can be had for $7, about 33 cents in 1940s money) to go around. A hot fresh loaf out of the oven is now a novelty.

I wonder this too but everybody else in this household cuts wavering and irregular slices. If I'm lucky I end up with a slice with a wedge profile. Usually worse.

It's hardly a difficult skill to acquire, I'd think.

Irregular slices...

The "dad's joke" of my grandfather. I'm not sure my translation is good, but hopefully it is good enough.

Granddad: Do you want a slice to hold in one hand or in two?

Me: mm... in two.

Granddad carefully cuts a slice so thin, that it is impossible to hold it in one hand.

Ever try and cut fresh bread and you have to smoosh it and it gets all flat and ruined. I have and I didn't like it.

I don't know how well they would work for American bread because it is much more soft than German bread, but many households have (bread) cutting machines here (Brotschneidemaschine). Also specially long serrated knifes are common for the task as well.

IDK if it's German vs American, but bakery-white-bread (or supermarket-baked-white-bread) is so much better and crispier than stuff you get in a plastic bag. Almost as good as one I make in a bread-maker, minus all the fuss.

Eh? I always cut my own bread(the sliced bread only really appeared here few years ago, and it's a faff because you have to ask at the bakery for them to cut it for you) and I can't imagine how you could smush it. Is that the weird American toast bread? An actual loaf of bread(like this:

https://assets.tmecosys.com/image/upload/t_web600x528/img/re... )

definitely doesn't smoosh when cut.

There is more to bread than what you showed, but yes, amongst others, weird American toast bread can collapse under a knife. Not that it's the only one.

Sliced bread has plenty of obvious benefits, but I hate how it's sold in the US. In Japan it's sold in smaller cubes.

You don't usually have to worry about left over bread going moldy from a huge loaf, or ruining the texture by freezing leftovers.

But the best part is that you can choose the slice size. If you want delicious soft in the middle toast for breakfast you can choose a brick in four or six slices. If you want a sandwich, select six or eight slices. I think you can go all the way down to 10 or 12, but never liked my bread that thin.

In the Netherlands we eat bread which you cannot easily slice yourself. You need a machine for that. Most people eat this kind of bread in the morning and during lunch.

Ah yes still waiting on that futuristic cheap bread slicer machine. If my bread is more or less than 15mm it will be a day to remember

I don't ever get the slices even. They're thinner on one side etc. And why would I slice it myself if a machine can do it for me?

A real bread keeps fresh longer if it's not cut. You cut what you want to eat, the rest you leave with the cut side facing down on the cutting board. It lasts longer if you put a paper bag over it but don't close it completely. You want the crust to be the packaging for the bread. The paper bag helps to keep the moisture so it doesn't dry too fast but won't destroy the crust either. The cutting board seals the side you already cut. Depending of bread sort, this can make your bread stay nice for several days.

I think you're talking about a much higher quality bread than what's available in the typical American grocery store.

It's a convenience. That doesn't mean slicing it yourself is hard, per se, it means that for some people the convenience is worth it. (And what's annoying for one person can be a hardship for another, e.g. if someone has a disability.)

Personally, I don't like it, since it stales so quickly -- or you have to add a bunch of additives to prevent that. But now that I have a kid, I suddenly understand why sliced cheese and bread could be useful -- my kid isn't strong enough to slice them herself yet, and I'd like her to be able to prepare her own food.

Nothing really, but sliced breads mean I know how long it's going to last and I have consistent portions. I think this actually ends up being a good convenience.

How's worst (or best) of both worlds - local shop (Lidl) makes you slice the bread yourself. You put it in the machine, pick thickness (obvs no option for what you really after), it slices it and then you have to package yourself. Whole process takes eons (minutes), it's super fiddly and a nightmare with kids and you inevitably loose a slice or two.

Would someone else slice it for me please, thank you very much.

I don't know whether this was true in the 1940s, but today, sliced bread is extremely different from other bread. Not because of the slicing, but because it's a very different, longer lasting product that also happens to be sliced.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3sP2jwG9jc

Not all sliced bread. The bakery at my grocery store offers all of their breads in sliced and non-sliced forms. I'm sure they put in some type of preservative, as it lasts longer than when I bake bread, but it lasts no where near as long as the sandwich bread that is sold in a different section of the store.

Modern ultra-soft bread can't be sliced without a machine. The stuff you bake yourself, no problem.

The article alludes to this, but families were larger and bread was eaten with just about every meal.

I always freeze my bread, and frozen bread would be very frustrating to cut.

Also... Why not?

I find that it dries out and gets moldy quicker.

If you freeze it, that doesn't happen (can get freezer burn but that's a different issue). Freezing a uncut loaf makes it very difficult to consume.

True, I do freeze toast but I would never do that to a nice loaf of sourdough for instance and then I wouldn't slice it usually, for the stated reasons.

Keep it in a fridge even if it's a cardinal sin according to Vienna Convention

Toast maybe, not real bread :D

I feel the same about pre-sliced bagels. That some jurisdictions have an additional tax on sliced bagels makes the notion, to me, even more absurd.

Many would say the same of "pre-baked" bread.

Slicing it myself goes through the bread faster, but I'm used to european bread / loaf though.

Our sliced bread is very different from wonder bread.

I never expected to see a town I grew up near (Chillicothe, MO) being mentioned as the place where sliced bread was first introduced to the market. I love it.

I guess this came up from all the posts about QE2 being older than sliced bread yesterday.

This reeks of a common fallacy that I come across: "I need to do something because of X, therefore I'm going to do something painful an inconvenient." When cooler minds look, the thing that's painful and inconvenient isn't needed at all.

Rationing was at least as much about making everyone feel involved in the war effort as it was about actual material savings.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/rationing-in-wwii.htm

I tend to think the TSA measures to fight terror fall into the same category. More of a psychological operation on the public than anything effective.

TSA makes a lot more sense when one views it as a jobs program

There are so many more things people can work at and actually benefit society than security theater and public harassment.

yes. Note I didn't say it was a good thing. Just that it makes more sense that it exists.

The market would accomplish the same thing rationing does, inducing austerity via high prices, but the morale cost wouldn't just be a a lost opportunity to make people feel involved, it would also be resentment, possibly deprivation, and a real need for workers to renegotiate in response to different material costs. Better if you can avoid that in the middle of a war.

(And perhaps the danger the US is in as it responds to war in Ukraine)

let's talk about single use plastic which was a result of the war efforts.

For all it's evils, single use plastic prevents a lot of food spoilage, and could be considered good for the environment on a certain axis.

(yes I am aware that it's very existence changes how people behave, probably enabling wasteful behaviour)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com