Jesus takes a loaf of bread and says, “This is my body”.
The “this” is the loaf of bread. It is “my body” which is to be given, not the loaf of bread so nothing more is being said about the bread.
Therefore the bread represented his body, the wine his blood.
It wasn’t the bread that was to be given in their behalf but it was his body.
By eating the bread and drinking the wine they were in a representative way eating and drinking of his body.
“You’re not answering the question:”
You’re not paying attention.
There in John 6:50 Jesus says in reference to himself,
“This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone may eat of it and not die”.
He’s not offering a loaf of passover bread as he did at the last supper. The bread and wine represented his flesh and blood. The way in which his disciples would “eat” and “drink” of him was by exercising faith in him. (John 6:35)
It is that sense that the Israelites ate and drank from Jesus in the wilderness. (1 Cor. 10:4)
“On your reading, the words of the Last Supper are at best badly phrased.”
Not so any more than Jesus poorly phrased his comment about being “born” again, which is not to be taken literally but means one must undergo something comparative to being born.
The “this” is the loaf of bread. It is “my body” which is to be given, not the loaf of bread so nothing more is being said about the bread.
"Nothing more is being said about the bread" -- except of course that it "is My body."
It only works as figurative if "My body" somehow illuminates the bread at least in some aspect.