Burlington YMCA Hits a Nerve Asking: How Do You Eat Bagels?

Hanalei Henderson Credit: Mary Ann Lickteig ©️ Seven Days

Members of the Greater Burlington YMCA have been flexing more than their muscles. Earlier this month the org called on its customers to answer one of life’s great questions: What is the proper way to eat a bagel with cream cheese?

The debate started during Member Appreciation Week when the Y offered free bagels and cream cheese on “Wellness Wednesday.” One front desk staffer asked another which half of the bagel she eats first, assuming that everyone eats them open-faced. But Hanalei Henderson told her colleague, a staffer named Mike, that she prefers them closed, like a sandwich.

“I was like, That’s insane. That’s crazy,” Mike recalled. Henderson told Seven Days that it had never occurred to her to eat bagels any other way. “And I stand by that, as the way I eat my bagels,” she said.

So, they took the question to the people. For the next week, as members checked in at the front desk, they had the opportunity to pick up a pen and choose a side in the YMCA Bagel Preference Poll, which asked, “How do you eat your bagel with ONLY cream cheese?”

“Duh,” someone wrote in the “Open-Faced” column. “This is the one way. (Unless on the street in Manhattan.)” Directly across, in the “Closed-Faced (like a sandwich)” column was this: “OPEN FACED SANDWICH IS NOT A SANDWICH.”

“More bagel time,” wrote a member arguing for open-faced.

“This is gross,” someone countered in childlike scrawl.

The issue has divided families. “People are very passionate about their bagels,” said Henderson, 21, whose go-to is scallion cream cheese on roasted red pepper-Asiago. One person wrote that if the bagel is untoasted, they eat it as a sandwich but, if it’s toasted, they eat it open-faced. Another likes to spread the cream cheese, smoosh the bagel together, then open it.

When the poll closed last week, open-faced won, 75-39, and Henderson acknowledged her expanded world view: “So many people are eating their bagels as two pieces.”

“Maybe I’ll try it,” she said. “There were some good points, you know. The cream cheese can, like, squirt out the sides when you eat it as a sandwich.”

The original print version of this article was headlined “Counting Carbs”