Here is my homage to sliced bread.

Fifty years old today.

Which raises the obvious question: before 1961, if you wanted to say something was "the best thing since...", what expression did you use?

Revisionist history! Here is the truth.

What's celebrating its 50th anniversary is bread made by the Chorleywood method (i.e. pumped full of chemicals), not the fact that it's sliced. I can recall sliced bread when I was young and the slices tended to be uneven and ragged as the air bubbles in the bread were often large.

You're celebrating chemicals being added to food?

Alternatively, just a suggestion, people could find out what it's the anniversary of by reading the article.

And I still like the poem.

I had read the link and the comment stands.

I've read the article. It says:

quote:

1928: First bread slicing machine, invented by Otto Rohwedder, exhibited at a bakery trade fair in the US
1930: Large UK bakeries take commercial slicers and sliced bread first appears in shops
1933: Around 80% of US bread is pre-sliced and wrapped. The phrase "the best thing since sliced bread" coined

Am I missing something?

I'm grateful to you for posting it, though, because I hadn't heard of the "Chorleywood Bread Process" until now. It certainly goes a long way to explain the tastelessness and bland consistency of supermarket-bought bread.

As far as I can see all people are missing is that it's a light-hearted last-item-on-the-news item that made me write a light-hearted poem more about ageing than bread.

Kind of wishing I hadn't bothered.

Unfortunately, it appears smileys are required to distinguish humor from serious comment -- an appendage I neglected to affix.

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
As far as I can see all people are missing is that it's a light-hearted last-item-on-the-news item that made me write a light-hearted poem more about ageing than bread.

How could you not have known?
No wonder no one said!
Now everyone has told you
You're younger than sliced bread.
Sliced bread is over eighty,
By quite a little way;
At only fifty-four, you seem
A long way from decay.

But four years after you
The folks at Chorleywood
Invented springy, spongy bread
Which didn't taste so good.
Why can't the supermarkets sell
The proper stuff instead?
A loaf from Chorleywood is not
The best thing since sliced bread!

Can I repost that, credited of course, on the blog?

By all means!