Americans ate an estimated 3 billion bagels at home last year, an average of about 11 per person (this doesn’t include bagels eaten at work, where a not-completely-insignificant number are delivered by bagel economist Paul Feldman). And in the course of slicing up all those bagels, 1,979 people cut their fingers so badly that they ended up in an emergency room. By the finger-cut-to-E.R. metric, that makes bagel-cutting the fifth most dangerous activity in the American kitchen. So it shouldn’t be surprising that an array of home gadgets have arrived on the scene to prevent bagel-related injuries. The Wall Street Journal has a lively review of several of them, here. [%comments]
Bagel Danger
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I am guilty of almost slicing a 1/4″ disk off the top of my thumb almost 20 years ago. But, just like the child who was careless with a hot stove once, I learned my lesson, and pass it on to whomever I see slicing in a dangerous fashion.
FWIW – I have been hearing about how dangerous bagel slicing has been all through the past 20 years. The fact that there were under 2k emergency room visits is not too bad. I mean, a vast majority of those sliced fingers and palms have to be relatively minor injuries where the patient just needs help to stop the bleeding. It’s not like chainsaw or ax accidents…
Oh America, when will you stop inventing useless things and start using your brains like the rest of world?
IMHO, the much bigger danger from bagels is the enormous amount of calories packed in them which lead to obesity, etc if eaten too often.
Bagels are a nice ‘treat’ once or twice a month but be weary of packing on the pounds if you have one every day.
This is consistent with the event televised on Jay Leno show on Thanksgiving when 5 members of the US fighting forces were challenged to open a can of cranberry sauce using a Swiss Army knife. It was an almighty mess as none of them were able to do it easily, one failed completely and at least one injured himself.
Am I the only on who finds it worrying that folks today are unfamiliar with basic tool use?
Why do you think they call the Emergency Room the Knife and Gun Club?
Bagels. That’s why.
What year is it? 1989? Didn’t we run through all these bagel-cutting devices 20 years ago?
It would really be a shame to cut a finger on a New York Bagel…now if it was on a Montreal Bagel, now that would be worth the sacrifice!
Not to mention the danger from breaking teeth and heads when encountering day old bagels, the greatest danger from bagels is actually obesity. They are far more calorie dense than toast and they just keep getting bigger and bigger, like us.