Instructions: Yesterday, I squeezed a bagel. (Actually, it was a package of bagels.)

Squeezable bagels? What a concept! What a joke! Until about 10 years ago, bagels were typically so hard that they served as edible teething rings. Infants could safely gnaw on them for hours, drooling happily. And now you can squeeze them like Wonder Bread.

A couple of years ago, at a symposium at New Yorks New School for Social Research, Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett of New York University gave a talk with the wonderful title, "The Americanization of the Bagel: the Bagelization of America."

She outlined the bagels history from its humble origins in 17 th-Century Europe, to its arrival in the United States with the great immigration of Eastern European Jews about 100 years ago. She then traced its changing status from an ethnic specialty to a touchstone of ethnic humor, and, finally, a diet food. She stunned her audience with a couple of remarkable statistics: In 1996, 2.7 billion bagels were sold in the U.S., double the number from 1994.

I couldnt help thinking of our friend from a small town in the Middle West.

Six-foot four, blond, crew cut, and not Jewish, he came East many years ago and discovered (separately) pastrami and bagels. He told us then that he felt a little self-conscious at the bakery counter ordering his assortment of six plain, three pumpernickel, and three egg bagels. This was before blueberry bagels or oat-bran bagels or sun-dried tomato bagels had come into being. It was a time when bagels existed only in big cities with large Jewish populations with large appetites for bagels and the skilled bakers to satisfy them.

Now people of every background from Marthas Vineyard to Maui are eating bagels from the freezer case or local bagel shop, with every addition imaginable, and some - like bacon - unimaginable to kosher bakers. That might be fine and dandy if the basic bagels were what they should be, but too often they are no more than bagel-shaped bread, sweetened and softened to please Wonder Bread palates.

A real bagel should have a glossy crisp crust, a dense, chewy interior, and be only very slightly sweet. It should have a 10-minute bath in boiling water before its baked. Thats the kind of bagel that has appeared for generations at life-cycle occasions. Its with us for the bris (ritual circumcision of a baby boy ) or simchat bat ( baby-naming for a girl), for collations after religious services, for bar or bat mitzvah, pre-nuptial celebrations, and at the final gathering of a family after a funeral. Along the way, the bagel has acquired an extra symbolism: its roundness reminds us of the endless cycle of life.

In recent years, as two-earner households have become the norm, we have seen a succession of eat-on-the-run breakfast fads. First, croissants reigned, rarely as good as they should have been, and ultimately left by the wayside because of their high fat content. Then muffins ruled, with low-fat versions popping up for the health-conscious. Then the bagel - fat-free by nature - ascended.

Whoever said that bagels are a nutritious breakfast - let alone lunch - for every day? They arent. Even if you resist the temptation to load them up with cream cheese or butter, you are still eating nothing but refined white flour, water, yeast, and salt. No whole grain, precious little protein or fiber. Better to have some whole grain cereal with fruit, or whole grain toast instead, and let bagels be a treat for weekend brunches and other special occasions: St.

Patricks Day, perhaps, when they mysteriously turn green and are accompanied by green beer.

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