If you’ve ever been peckish at lunchtime while beyond the UK’s borders, you’ll know that meal deals are not particularly common in other parts of the world.
It’s a little humbling to realise our contemporaries in Europe and America, for example, don’t have the luxury of simply spending £4 on a sandwich, packet of crisps, and a drink during their lunch breaks.
Many of us, it turns out, are pretty dependent on them in our daily routines.
As much as they’re essentially a British institution, how many of us stop and wonder how so many fresh sandwiches get made and boxed up ready for us to descend upon them?
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A video showing the bulk preparation of these meal deal sandwiches has been doing the rounds online, and some sandwich fans say they’ve been 'put off for life' by what goes on behind the scenes.
How It’s Made, a YouTube series from the Science Channel, has hauled in over a million views with its explainer on how our meal deal sandwiches are assembled.
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The video shows that the sandwiches are made to very detailed specifications, with a combination of machines and manual labour going into each one.
Workers feed freshly-sliced bread into a machine whilst checking for flaws and binning any less-than-perfect slices.
After being separated by the machine, each slice is then coated with a layer of butter by an automated roller before then having whichever condiment applied.
Once these machine-led processes are done, the human workers step back in to add the fillings. This isn’t always the case, but 'more specific' ingredients almost always need a human touch.
The video shows grated cheese and cold cuts of ham being added to sandwiches by dutiful workers, and then a machine finishes the job by slicing them into triangular halves and boxing them up.
Other parts of the video show some fillings being made in bulk by machines, with those fillings often being squirted from a nozzle by a human worker.
Imagine tuna mayo coming out of a toothpaste tube and you’ll be on the right lines.
It goes to show how far removed from food production we’ve become that some people find this clean, repeatable process to be somewhat nauseating, but most have responded somewhat more sensibly.
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"My biggest takeaway is that the two halves in the pack aren't from the same sandwich," one person commented.
Another wrote: "That's really interesting, I've always wondered how pre-made sandwiches/wraps are made!"
Some struggled with the fact that the video showed many workers touching the sandwiches with their bare hands.
"It’s great how the workers use their bare hands to feel the connection of everyone before and after them who has touched the sandwich," said one person.
“As someone who works in a school kitchen, it's blowing my mind to see these workers handling food that will go out to millions without any form of glove,” another agreed.
"I like how the workers are wearing hair nets and aprons and all sorts of food safety gear to prevent contaminants from getting into the sandwiches but then they handle them all with their bare hands,” said one other person.
"We all know the hands never get dirty and don't need protection gear to avoid contaminants getting into the food."
Topics: UK Food
Kerri-Ann Roper