Is sliced bread really that great?

Last night I was a bit hungry so I routed around my cupboards and decided on some toast for a snack. Peanut butter is my topping of choice, crunchy or smooth it makes no difference. It goes on right out of the toaster so it is runny and the layer is not too thick. While enjoying my snack perched over the kitchen sink I started thinking randomly about stuff settling quickly on toast. At once an old saying jumped to mind, “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!” I’m sure that you have heard this uttered at least once in your life although I suspect it was on TV, no real person talks in idioms.

My qualm with this saying is that I don’t really think that sliced bread is that fantastic of a thing. The wording takes for granted that you know what bread is so we can assume that it is not the invention of bread that the saying is referring to. So the jump is from bread to sliced bread a process that requires only a knife and a gentle hand. Sure in the old days a loaf of bread was probably consumed in a very medieval way. Ripping handfuls off of the loaf and tossing it around the room was probably a mainstay at dinner parties. I imagine sliced bread being invented by some mysophobic aristocrat that was sick of diving head first for the loaf at the beginning of every meal. Unfortunately the real truth is much less interesting.

I submit that people start using a different version of the same idea. How about something that was in fact a great and revolutionary invention, say, I don’t know, electricity. Or how about Penicillin? I think those might fit the bill a little better. Heck even regular bread would work, it was an extremely important advance in the agrarian history of the human race. Anybody have anything better?