Institute For The Future

The Importance of an Everlasting Sandwich

I have to admit, I kind of scoffed when I read the following headline: “Gas-Flushed Sandwiches Stay Fresh for Two Weeks.” The corresponding article explained that Booker Group, the UK’s largest food and drink wholesaler, is “launching chicken tikka and cheese ploughmans sandwiches, among others, it insists will remain fresh for 14 days.” 

 

The process that gives these sandwiches their alarmingly long shelf-life is described here:

 

“The secret behind the sandwich's anti-ageing is a process of gas flushing, Boggiano explained, where oxygen is replaced by CO2 and nitrogen as part of the protective atmosphere packaging. Highly perishable foods such as lettuce are not used, while the sandwiches include specially developed fillings such as a slightly more acidic mayonnaise with a low pH, as well as oatmeal bread to make them more micro-biologically stable”

 

The article framed the eternal sandwich as a sort of a wacky, misguided project, and initially that’s how I saw it too. “Is the kind of cosmopolitan consumer that likes chicken tikka sandwiches really going to want to buy its nitrogen-infested zombie cousin?”

 

After giving it some thought, I decided the answer could actually be “yes.”

 

There is an undeniable trend towards people valuing fresh, locally-sourced ingredients—and with good reason. A lot of the time, local foods are healthier, taste better and are more sustainably produced and distributed. But unfortunately, those aren’t the only factors that come into play when people make food choices.

 

Fast food, instant food and frozen food seem to have done pretty well in the U.S. during the recession. And the brief hype surrounding a fast-food burger that supposedly didn’t decompose for six months (!) doesn’t seem to have changed that.

 

In short, economic situations create vastly different imperatives around food. Fresh foods that are produced in sustainable and socially responsible ways are more expensive than food products that aren’t. And when someone’s struggling to keep the lights on in the short-term, you can’t really blame them for choosing foods that are cheap and taste okay, even if they’re bad for the environment and that person’s personal health in the long-run.

 

So while it’s nice to imagine a world in which we’re all eating tasty and nutritious local produce all the time, the immortal sandwich is a powerful reminder that that dream is out of touch with many peoples’ current reality.