All right, Berkshire County bagel lovers. How do you take your bagels? Toasted? Slathered with plain cream cheese? How about topped with egg, cheese, and sausage? Or perhaps cream cheese and lox(smoked salmon)?
Forget about the toppings for a second. How about the bagel itself? Nowadays, you can find bagels in all sorts of flavors and varieties. Do you stick with the classics like plain, egg, or onion bagels? Something sweet like cinnamon and raisin? Or something with a little kick, like garlic or everything bagels?
What do I prefer? I hate to say it, but I’m becoming more predictable with each passing day. I enjoy most types of bagels(and for that matter, most bagel toppings), but my go-to would have to be an everything bagel, toasted, with chive and onion cream cheese! Mmm-mmmm.
On the other hand, my soulmate Tonya typically prefers the “sweeter” side of things. Her preference is a lightly-toasted cinnamon sugar bagel(like the kind they have at Panera) with a fair amount of butter. She loves them.
I also recall almost a 3-year span when I was in high school where I would have an onion bagel loaded with deli meat plus lettuce, cheese, onions, and mayo every day for lunch. I guess I had so many of them that I got sick of them for a little while.
Anyway, I got a little off-track there. Shane Co., the largest privately owned jeweler in the states, did a study recently on America’s bagel preferences. It’s a very cool study. Here are some interesting findings. The Top 5 Bagel choices:
- Everything was by far the most popular choice
- Blueberry
- Plain
- Asiago Cheese
- Cinnamon & Raisin
Also(hey, we can’t list the most popular bagels without listing the most popular cream cheeses, right?) the Top 5 Cream Cheese Flavors:
- Plain
- Chive & Onion
- Strawberry
- Garden Veggie
- Garlic & Herb
Before we get to how the Massachusetts Majority prefers their bagels, here’s something interesting. Even though bagels came here from Poland and Polish immigrants and began flourishing in New York City, the most bagel-obsessed state is not New York.
Believe it or not, the Pine Tree State is the most bagel-obsessed. Maine bagel fans eat an average of 73.37 bagels a year. Even Massachusetts bagel lovers consume more than New York per year on average at 59.25. New Yorkers eat an average of 54.04 bagels annually.
Okay. I think I’ve made you wait long enough. Most residents of the Bay State prefer to eat their bagels this way: An everything bagel with plain cream cheese topped with salmon and capers.
For more bagel info, including preferences for most of the other states, check out the study at Shane Co.’s website here.
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