How coronavirus ended Britain's love affair with the sandwich Kitty Drake
about 5 years in The guardian
The pandemic has broken our habits – including this trusty lunchtime staple
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The unthinkable has happened: British people have stopped buying sandwiches. Sandwich sales fell by nearly £1.3bn in lockdown, compared with the same period last year, according to analysts Kantar.
Admittedly, the sandwich is not a perfect pandemic food; to satisfactorily eat one you must repeatedly suck on your own fingers. But the sandwich is a national habit so ingrained, and so compulsive, it is a wonder coronavirus could break it. In a normal year we eat about 11.5bn sandwiches. That’s about 200 each per year, per adult. As the food writer Bee Wilson wrote in her 2010 book on the subject, the sandwich is less a meal than a “way of life”. Continue reading...