Remember when sliced bread was made of a uniform substance?

I do.

There was white bread and rye bread.  These I liked and ate regularly as a child – white bread for school lunches, rye bread at family gatherings.  There was also wheat bread and pumpernickel.  These breads I despised and would not eat even if it meant starving.  But all these breads were uniform, homogenous.  That is, they were made of one continuous substance.

The sliced bread they sell today comes with non-bread substances that interrupt the smooth homogeneity of the sliced breads of yesteryear.  Nuts embedded, dried oatmeal glued to the crust.  Everything is “multi-grain” instead of “mono-grain.”  Would you buy a car that was composed of parts from many different cars?  Why is this tolerated with our bread?  Instead of multi-grain bread they should call it Frankenstein bread.

And the most perplexing part is this “nouveau pain” isn’t any better.  “Pain” is right.  Wheat bread and pumpernickel may have been disgusting to taste.  But these breads did not also challenge the abilities of the alimentary canal.

I understand that some people like the embedded nuts and glued-on oatmeal.  To the extent of purchasing bread, you can say it’s a free country.  But sometimes multi-grain bread is the only kind of bread offered.  And it is offered with excitement, written in colored chalk in block letters on the “specials” blackboard:  MULTI-GRAIN!!!

Go ahead, have your multi-grain party.  Just leave some white bread for me.  Or rye bread.