You've Been Eating Bagels Wrong This Whole Time

Have you ever wondered if there is a right or wrong way to eat your bagel? Probably not, right? Well, like with all of life's universal and deep questions, you go to the internet when in doubt. There is quite the debate taking place online over the correct way to eat a bagel. From the way you slice your bagel, to how much cream cheese you pile on it, to toasting or not toasting it, to what part of the bagel you sink your teeth in first, the opinions and discussions revolving around this ring shaped dough are real (via Sarcasm Society).

And after reading all the controversy you never knew existed surrounding how to "properly" consume a bagel, you may never eat one without overthinking it again. Or, at least worrying if people around you are judging how you are eating your seemingly-innocuous breakfast food.

Like Dante's circles of hell and the corresponding punishments that go along with them, there are varying degrees of bagel eating sins. One Twitter user promoting a St. Louis style of bread slicing bagels found his way into the circles with an abundance of tweeters letting him know, bread slicing a bagel is unacceptable. The Twitterverse is not alone on this subject. A Brooklyn-born Quora user argues that, "You rip that torus into two pieces with your bare hands. No knife touches that bagel yet." And don't ask her for her thoughts on toasting the bagel because her answer in all caps is a tell tale sign that you should not.

Another point of contention centers around cream cheese. You don't want to have too much, and you don't want to have too little cream cheese on your bagel. This bagel sin will at the very least send you into a level of purgatory that you may not be able to eat your way out of. Too little cream cheese and you don't have anything for other toppings to stick to — that's if you believe that anything other than cream cheese belongs on your bagel. Put too much cream cheese on your bagel and it's dripping and getting all over the place. The bagel police say that's also not the right way. Either way, someone is going to judge you, so go with what makes your taste buds happy.

Bagel etiquette can be a tricky business and you don't want to commit a bagel faux pas when you are simply trying to enjoy its chewy goodness. But how you eat your bagel, how you take that first bite, apparently matters. Do you eat it like a sandwich or do you eat each half separately? Unapologetically Mundane contends you never eat your bagel like a sandwich. It's meant to be savored one half at a time, separately. 

One Reddit user asked the question,"How do you eat your bagel: like a sandwich or each half, separately?" It might surprise you to learn the answers were split. Some people said they eat it like a sandwich, while others were on team one half at a time. And then, there were even some responders who really live life on the wild side and do both. Of course, there's also a GQ writer who called eating a bagel like a sandwich "dumb". 

If all of these rules leave you scratching your head trying to figure out which is the right way, you're not alone. The bottom line: Eat your bagel however you enjoy it. That's the only right way.