A solution in search of a problem
The
Bagel Guillotine, introduced 15 years ago, sells steadily at 80,000 a year. By Mr. Ricard’s calculation, that makes it history’s most successful bagel-control device. He says, “We achieved a paradigm shift in bagel cutting.” He sees no need for new bagel slicers. And yet people keep inventing them — people like Dennis Moss and his son Michael. As long as the BRI menace persists, they believe, bagel-safety technology is open to improvement.On a recent evening, Dr. Moss, a 66-year-old radiologist, was at home in Rochester, N.Y., watching his son saw through a bagel with their latest innovation: a slender knife fitted inside a molded-plastic guard. They call it the Brooklyn Bagel Slicer.
“My dad and I have a mission,” said Michael Moss, who is 36. Said Dr. Moss, “If we keep anybody out of the emergency room it saves health-care dollars.” His son said, “Dad’s against unnecessary procedures.” They call bagel injuries “an epidemiological scourge.”
In 2008, according to an analysis of fingers cut by knives as reported in the government’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, 1,979 people appeared in ERs with a BRI. Chicken-related injuries (3,463) led the category, but recorded bagel injuries were otherwise exceeded only by potato, apple and onion injuries.
Bagels, in fact, were implicated in more finger cuts than pumpkins (1,195) or cheese (1,236). Fewer than 100 incidents in 2008 involved turnips; ditto for wedding cakes.
(Of course, many BRI victims skip ERs and go to urgent-care offices. Or they stay home and eat breakfast anyway.)
When bagels were on a roll in the 1990s, moving beyond the urban enclaves where they first landed from Eastern Europe, some attributed the BRI problem to untrained slicers in white-bread regions. Untrue, say bagel-control experts. Every American now eats an average of 11.06 bagels a year at home, according to the market-research group NPD. But the crux of the issue is bagel authenticity.
As Maria Balinska tells it in her book,
The Bagel,” fear of bagel-injury litigation led Lender’s to sell its frozen bagels pre-sliced, even before they hit the Midwest in the 1970s. Today, bagels at Wal-Mart or Dunkin’ Donuts are steamed before baking. They may be round and have a hole, but they’re fluffily sliceable.[Click to continue reading To Keep the Finger Out of Finger Food, Inventors Seek a Better Bagel Cutter – WSJ.com]
