the horror!

Entire Internet Horrified by ‘St. Louis Secret’ That Actually Ruins Bagels

Jordan Peele only just released Us on Friday, but the horror that everyone on the internet is talking about right now is … this image of sliced bagels. Alek Krautmann, who seems to work in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is probably a fine person otherwise, claims this cutting technique — “bread sliced” — is a “St. Louis secret,” and that some of his co-workers, when confronted with the horror show you see above, actually approved. There is no way this is true. Occasional Grub Street contributor Mark Byrne did some gumshoe reporting and refutes the original, blasphemous narrative.

Still, maybe we’re all wrong? Maybe turning bagels into, essentially, untoasted bagel chips really is a good idea? Grub will even grant Krautmann that there does seem to be a lot of extra surface area that could be used for cream cheese, essentially making this something like a Hasselback-potato cut. (Hasselback-bagel gratin, anyone?) So, we took it to the people and set up a poll on Grub Street’s Instagram Story.

Thankfully, the data does not lie: As of press time, more than 70 percent of respondents have declared this bagel-slicing fiasco to be “sacrilege.” It seems that even other residents of “the Lou” know that the image pinging its way all around the internet is pure insanity, as they were among the many, many people who chimed in to say that, no, this is not okay:

Internet Horrified by ‘St. Louis Secret’ That Ruins Bagels