Posted by beatthatflight 7 days ago
I'm familiar with them from Australia, where Orthogonidectes seems the most common, and was a helpful addition to our bread freshness as a child. However in northern Europe these days the same niche is occupied by an entirely different variant not present on this page, more akin to a twist-tie (metal covered in plastic, which bends.) Both kinds attach to the same location on the host bread bag, enclosing the mouth of the bag and helpfully holding bread in while preventing airflow. How fascinating to see the same niche, with a different alternative.
I thought they were commonplace until I moved outside the US; at least here in Germany I never see them.
As kids you'd break off one of the half-circle parts, stick it on your finger and flick it to make a makeshift ninja star.
It’s super effective but my wife isn’t a fan. Neither was my mom.
But I'm with you, friend. Occlupanida securing the primary containment vessels housing the partitioned units of bovine secretions, all the way!
Bread bags are pinched and taped, folded and over and taped, or (in the case of supermarket-baked bread) maybe taped paper if not actually simply folded.
Bread in the UK has improved so enormously in my lifetime that we have largely abandoned sci-fi long-life bread anyway, though Sunblest is still around for any quiet men the kids have given cheeky nicknames who are still saving up for a boat. We’ve also largely moved away from giant loaves of bread towards smaller loaves, but the bigger stuff increasingly seems to be sold in waxed paper anyway.
So reusable sealing devices just seem silly.
As you say, the industrially-produced sliced white 800g loaf has fallen out of fashion in the UK, and only 20% of us will buy one in any given month. The market is consolidating as a result, with two of the three main providers (ABF and Hovis) in the process of merging.
And unlike, say, our transition to semi-skimmed milk, it doesn't seem to have really happened as a result of deliberate nudge theory; it's probably more down to cheap flights to the EU and exposure to European bread that people started to remember that our bread used to be varied, rustic and regional, and bakers found that there was demand for pre-Chorleywood breads.
Perhaps it happened simultaneously with our rediscovery of quality cheese.
Including our rejection of margarine, three mass-production uniform-food trends reversed over the same period.
ETA: I guess there was a bit of nudge theory regarding wholemeal bread — was it ever subsidised? Can't remember if margarine alternatives ever had subsidies.
There are some positive side effects to this, which is probably the reason we're so tolerant of their presence.
Sweden has a wire encased in plastic thing that crimps the opening shut instead.
Both types are re-usable at least for the expected lifetime of a loaf of bread.