Bread as a reflection upon society
Can you imagine waking up in the morning and needing to pull out a whole loaf of bread and cut yourself a slice before you can even spread on your favourite spread? What sort of dystopia would we be living in if that were the case? Well, as hard as it is to imagine, that is the world we would be in without the invention of sliced bread. Sliced bread is the epitome of making something ridiculously convenient and consumable (literally consumable, in this case). It is one of those conveniences that is so integrated in society, that the idea of not having it does not even enter people’s minds.
The history of sliced bread
The person credited as the inventor of the first automatic bread-slicing machine for commercial use is Otto Frederick Rohwedder. Otto Frederick Rohwedder was an American inventor and engineer. He initially had a working prototype, but in 1912, it was lost to a fire. By 1928, he completed a fully-functioning machine. His machine was first used by the Chillicothe Baking Company, for their product, “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread.” The company first sold this bread on July 7th, 1928. Baker Gustav Papendick later purchased Rohwedder’s machine, with the intent of improving it so slices are kept together for loaves to be wrapped more easily. He eventually devised a method of using a cardboard tray to keep the slices aligned for the wrapping machines to function. By 1930, Wonder Bread began marketing sliced bread across America, which was integral to its normalization.
Sliced bread made loaves of bread have uniform slices, thinner than what people had been accustomed to. This made people eat more slices of bread at a time. Sliced bread also made the use of spreads, such as peanut butter, to be used more. Now, due to its convenience, sliced bread is available all around the world. It is available in many different types, such as whole wheat or multigrain, or thicknesses. Sliced bread, as a concept, is what we must consider when asking where the line is on making things convenient. Is there a limit on how easy or accessible we should make things, or do we, as a species, need challenges in our lives to advance?
Image Reference:
- https://www.mysteinbach.ca/blogs/9855/the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frederick_Rohwedder
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread
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