How do you cut your bagels? Oh, in half, you say? So that you have two equally flat circles on which to spread cream cheese? Cool, cool. Us, too. That's how a sane person does it.
But there's someone out there claiming to be a mathematician (we haven't confirmed her credentials, but we have questions) who thinks you're cutting your bagels wrong.
The so-called mathematician Eugenia Cheng argues that the best way to cut your bagel, "according to math," is to cut it like a Mobius strip. "The Mobius strip is one of my favorite mathematical structures," she says. "It's only got one side." We're with her so far. Mobius strips are cool.
She loses us, however, when she suggests that you should cut your bagel this way. One of the perks, she claims, is that you can "spread [cream cheese] all the way over this bagel without ever taking my knife off," as if that's a problem that's been plaguing bagel eaters for generations.
For some reason, Tech Insider made the video, which was then tweeted out by Business Insider, where it seems to be attracting the most shock and outrage. Why does a technology site or a business site want to show us how we should be preparing our food? No idea. Maybe we should hire a mathematician to figure it out for us.
— JC Lau 🦖 🔜 PAX Dev|West (@drjclau) February 15, 2017
— 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧 🔜 PAX West (@steinekin) February 15, 2017
Wtf are you talking about just cut it in half jesus https://t.co/VNicO7Lb8d
— Juice Tin 🍊 (@j00zt1n) February 15, 2017
congrats she made it take longer and harder to slice a bagel. pic.twitter.com/m3JveKJSI7
— TheBaroness89 (@Rays_Left_Hook) February 15, 2017
It's tactics like these that got Donald Trump elected president. https://t.co/11omy4qoo0
— Colin Moriarty (@notaxation) February 15, 2017
This isn't the first time this has come up. The Daily Mail posted a story in 2015 claiming "Scientists say you should slice the snack along the 'Mobius Strip' to add more filling." What scientists? Who on this planet is funding bagel cutting research when we should be out there curing deadly diseases or figuring out what CeeLo Green was wearing at the Grammys?
Oh, wait, upon further investigation, the scientist in question is just Cheng again. She's been on this crusade for awhile, huh?
The Daily Mail even posted a GIF in which they drew on the bagel with a marker, because yeah, that promotes safe food habits.
Here's the real, "right" way to eat a bagel: However you dang well please.
The way we eat bagels isn't broken. Stop trying to fix it.
