Are we talking (a) mass-produced sliced bread, or are we talking (b) home baked/local bakery bread?
Mass-produced sliced bread:
[*]The ends are overcooked.
[*]The ends are sliced by machine and are often cut to an unusable size.
[*]The ends are dry because they are overcooked, not moist like the rest of the bread.
[*]The ends are exposed to air much more than the rest of the bread in the bag, thus the air makes the end much more stale than the rest. Plus that outer end usually molds first due to the air exposure.
[*]Mass-produced sliced bread is basically free, so why not throw out the bad parts and eat just the good parts?
Home baked/local bakery bread:
[*]This stuff is good throughout. Most people do eat the heel, so this whole thread is pointless.
Me personally, I leave the heel in there just so that it will be the piece that gets dry/moldy/stale and then toss it out when it reaches the other heel. I do eat the last grape. The mild goes bad (very rancid with chunks of milk floating on a wattery liquid base) before I reach the halfway point. So I'm supposed to eat these rancid milk chunks? I wish milk was sold in smaller quantities for reasonable prices. As it is, half gallon milk is cheaper than smaller quantities. I need ~1/5th gallons, but then I would finish the last bit of it.