What Truly Is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?
Is it time to update the idiom?
We say, “the best thing since sliced bread,” to refer to any situation regarded as the best innovation, invention, or development in a long time. But seriously, was sliced bread really such a landmark invention?
At least right now, if you want quality bread, it most often comes unsliced. The garbage you get at the supermarket is often just sugar and additives binding together refined wheat to look like what we once knew as bread.
And yet we hold onto this crazy idiom that reflects white privilege more than reality.
Now that we have a perspective on the twentieth century, what really was the best development?
What makes an idiom?
Does an idiom need to be globally relevant? I would think it does these days.
Perhaps in America, sliced bread is ubiquitous enough. But we wouldn’t say sliced bread has global relevance. Gosh, there are some parts of the world where any kind of bread would be welcome.
The best thing since the 12-step program
Not to say they are perfect, but arguably 12-step programs were one of the greatest social innovations of the last one-hundred years…
