Pre-sliced bread is convenient, affordable, and saves your hands from cuts — honestly, the things we call “the greatest thing since sliced bread” often don't even come close. However, for a brief period in history, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the production of sliced bread for a surprising reason.

Sliced bread has been around since 1928, when Otto Rohwedder invented the bread-slicing machine, and it quickly became a staple in American homes. During World War II in the 1940's, the FDA shockingly banned the use of bread-slicing machines, effectively outlawing sliced bread and earning plenty of ire from American citizens.

The FDA banned sliced bread over concerns about how much wax paper and plastic was used to package it; this was not an early environmentally-friendly policy, but a way to ration money and materials in the midst of WWII. Worldwide war or not, Americans were so incensed by the ban that it was lifted just three months later.