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* – A slight improvement on previous incarnations of bread, but nonetheless undeserving of the hyperbole it inspires amongst the masses.
For some reason it is widely accepted in English-speaking cultures that sliced bread is the benchmark from which to compare all subsequent technological, social, economic, and baking developments.
“I like your ‘small is beautiful‘ conception of the world Mr E. F. Schumacher, it’s the best thing since sliced bread!”
Is our fictional character’s exclamation justified?
In many ways it is. That’s if you’re a profit hungry capitalist schweinhund of course.
Indeed, the primary impact of sliced bread, which was first sold in 1924, and at the time was heralded as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped” (how deliciously ironic!), has been to increase the consumption of bread and spreads such as jam and peanut-butter. In the great cosmic merry-go-round, only a knife lies between you and a piece of bread. When I lived in Norway you just cut your loaf and awaited the onset of a culinary delight – this has the added benefit of providing the opportunity to vary slice size according to appetite, a choice sadly lacking for the hapless purchaser of pre-sliced bread. I can’t remember ever thinking, “you know what, the effort required to extend and contract my arm in a see-saw motion is one of the fundamental barriers to the fulfillment of my own happiness, what I need is to cut out the middle man”. Nor would I have put much epoch-changing importance on the fulfillment of such a wish.
False needs and false consciousness comrades!
In addition, it is likely a near certainty that the introduction of sliced bread into the consumer food-chain has contributed significantly to the profusion of fat bastards who now regularly roam the streets of Europe and North America, frantically searching for their next fix of sugary, high-carb, snacks. When a society stops slicing its own bread, it has essentially admitted to itself that it is too lazy and worthless to survive. Warburtons is to Britain what hyper-inflation was to the Weimar Republic.
Quite frankly, the notion that sliced bread is comparable to the mapping of the human genome or the space shuttle is fucking intellectually deranged. If anything, one should subvert this tiresome product and its claims to grandeur with the negative reversal it deserves. So, next time you watch Schindler’s list, knowingly, yet with a melancholy tinge in your voice, turn to the person next to you and say “woah, the Holocaust – worst thing since sliced bread”.
J Chisem
