Actual meat, no. But meat stuffed with dehydrated filler material might. And thanks to your post, I am never eating at Subway ever.
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The weird thing is I can make a veggie burger in the microwave at work, eat it on a bun with just a slice of cheese, and be more filled up than with a 6-inch Subway sub that is loaded with meat, veggies and dressing, and looks about twice as big.
I have a suspicion that when Subway first started out in the 70’s it was probably really good, and like all restaurant chains as it got bigger it got worse-- cost cutting, standardization of supplies, etc. The original Kentucky Fried Chicken made by the actual Col. Sanders really did have a “secret recipe” but now it’s basically just sugar, salt and breading.
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That alignment chart confuses me, cos I’ll happily call any of those things a sandwich and then eat it.
Except the chip butty. A chip butty isn’t a sandwich, it’s a big blog of stodgy carbohydrate.
Also, in Ireland we have crisp (potato chip) sandwiches.
To Irish people, crisps (potato chips) are basically indistinguishable from potatoes and are absolutely considered as one of your five a day.
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@bluehenbear Oh god, please no hot dog controversies.
@Carla_Sinclair When I moved to England it took me a month or two to get over how unsugared everything is over there. When I moved back, American food was difficult to eat for the first few weeks–sugar in everything.
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Their bread not being healthy has been known but its always good to see that information come out every now and then. Their whole wheat bread also has additives to make it look brown and isn’t any better for you than their regular bread. In a pinch i have done Subway but i stick to their veggie delight sandwich, but here in Austin there’s a fabulous sandwich shop i love called Thundercloud Subs and they make a superb veggie delight.
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Can’t qualify as bread for tax rebate purposes. Apparently Ireland has tax rebates on bread producers, but that bread has to contain less than 4% sugar.
There are tons of breads out there with lots of sugar (I recommend going to an asian bakery), which makes it brown better[1] without crisping it up as much.
It’s not to everyone’s tastes, but it doesn’t have to be!
[1] mmmh Maillard
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Heretic!!!
This is admittedly true.
For yea, the Prophet spoke unto her people and said “Let them southerners eat their fancy sandwiches wi’ cucumber and 't crusts cut off. Ye shalt eat stodge and like it.”
And lo, the cardiac wards of the north did despair and rejoice in equal measure for their future was secure.
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I am a Hardline traditionalist and everyone else is just plain wrong. 
The sewage may have wreaked its revenge but the bread reeked of sewage.
American pap would be correct, I feel
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To provide you an alternate view: the best sandwich I ever had was a Subway sandwich. Granted, my wife and I had just hiked in and out of Shenandoah Valley for an overnight, which was ten plus miles and some seriously long, steep climbs. We were physically wiped out, barely talking, and starving. We drove for a few miles and came to a town, and there… there was a Subway store, right there, beckoning to us. Never have I enjoyed a meal more, it was like eating ambrosia (not really, but you get the picture).
So, to sum up: if you’re exhausted and starving, these are delicious! Otherwise, probably not so much…
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I think we all have one of those, “I would normally avoid ____ but I was soooo hungry and too tired to care” stories.
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*sigh* Okay, I’ll white-knight Subway™.
Is it “real bread?” No, but you didn’t need an Irish judge to tell you that.
But treating it as bread for the moment, is it good bread? Would it be your favorite store brand? Again, no. But then, the exterior of an ice cream sandwich isn’t “good cake,” either. It’s terrible cake! And yet it’s not a problem, because it doesn’t need to be.
Subway bread is precision-engineered to hold whatever stuff you’re putting in your Subway sandwich, without competing on flavor. It’s the edible stick in your Lik-M-Aid (or Fun Dip, for you youngsters).
Now, given that you can make a sub with good bread—or at least better breadlike medium, if we’re talking about basically any sub you’ve ever eaten from a mom-and-pop place; it’s still not proper bread—why don’t they? Two reasons. The obvious one is cost; they know you won’t pay artisan prices for artisan bread. Not with that inflation-doomed “Five Dollar Footlong” jingle still rattling around in your head!
But there’s also the calorie question. You know how you can have a whole footlong Veggie Delite™ for 500 calories? Your stomach feels full for a few hours and you ate your (slightly wilted) vegetables and you didn’t blow your whole calorie budget by lunch! With proper bread, it’s now 1200. You don’t want that. You didn’t go to Subway because you were looking to do portion control!
Now if I sound like I consume kilotons of this processed breadlike sandwich structural product, it’s because I do. Or at least I did when I could safely leave the house. And I don’t mean to suggest for a minute that anyone should go to Subway who has the time, money, inclination, or energy to Eat Fresh™er than that. It is okay to not like what I (sort of) like! But the bread has to be like this. It’s baked right in to the basic function of the place, if you will.
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Cakewich?
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Don’t forget poor. To many, a footlong is two relatively good meals for $5. There is a reason they are bigger than everyone else.
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In related news, Subway is notorious for being one of the worst companies for franchise holders
Mostly because::
- The company sets up too many stores in close proximity to each other oversaturating the market.
- Promotions like $5 footlongs are sold at losses franchise holders can’t bear
- Has some of the highest franchise fees/royalties in the industry
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Yup. Plenty of people have essentially zero choice about whether to eat fast food during their workplace “lunch.” Subway isn’t as healthy as the “Jared” commercials* would have you believe, but it’s a better combination of affordable and nontoxic than most other places.
* Whatever happened to that guy, I wonder?
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I always thought that it smelled good, to the point where I wondered if it was actually the smell of the bread baking, or just some scent they pump into the nearby air to lure in potential diners.
I used to eat at Subway several times a week, back in high school. I thought the sandwiches were great but, before that, I didn’t eat many subs. I doubt Subway’s quality went down; I know that in the several decades since high school I’ve just had better quality at other places (even at other chains, like Potbelly’s). Nowadays I’d rather get a sandwich somewhere else, even if it’s a buck or two more. And Subway isn’t equipped to properly make (for example) a tuna melt.
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Subway bread isn’t American bread any more than Outback Steakhouse bread is Australian bread. A restaurant has created something resembling bread. Subway does not speak for the rest of the country, thanks.
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Hey, this is BoingBoing where everything stupid/substandard/evil/shitty is “American.”
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I never knew the ‘70s Subway experience, but I think they’ve improved since the ‘80s - early ‘90s. Back then, I literally could not distinguish between most of their meats. You could tell the difference between turkey, ham, and beef by looking at the color. The only ones that had any flavor were their seafood sub and their meatball sub.
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Jim Gaffigan has a bit where he tells us that only in America can you get 12 meatballs on a loaf of bread…and that’s the HEALTHY option.
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