The Sandwich
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 943 Ratings
🗓️ 18 October 2010
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheila Dillon hears from the people attempting to revolutionise the sandwich. We're now seeing the rise of food businesses specialising in just one type of sandwich using authentic recipes from around the world.
The food entrepreneurs are making everything from the Vietnamese Bahn Mi through to the Argentinean Lomito, all are sandwiches which rely on the makers finding authentic bread to match the original recipe.
This development is being watched closely by the large sandwich manufacturers supplying the supermarkets. The prepared sandwich business is with £3bn a year and is based on developing new ideas. Dan Saladino follows some sandwiches through the supply chain.
Sheila is also joined by the food writer Bee Wilson, the author of Sandwich: A Global History.
Producer: Dan Saladino.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
| 0:03.8 | podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC. |
| 0:08.6 | It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world. |
| 0:15.0 | What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism |
| 0:20.0 | and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines. |
| 0:23.7 | And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject |
| 0:28.3 | you might not even have thought you were interested in. |
| 0:30.2 | Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment, |
| 0:36.1 | you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.6 | At peak capacity this facility can produce around a million sandwiches per week. |
| 0:48.0 | 24 hours a day, seven days a week, almost every day of the year. |
| 0:54.0 | In a factory in Milton Keynes, a relentless production line |
| 0:58.0 | fees our appetite for what's probably the most successful meal ever invented. |
| 1:04.0 | All part of what over 30 years has grown into a 3 billion pound industry, |
| 1:10.0 | turning out sandwiches for the high street chains and the supermarkets. |
| 1:14.0 | It's so successful it's even been able to engineer its own tomato. |
| 1:19.0 | We used to call tomato polos because you'd chop them and slice them |
| 1:22.0 | and as they sat ready to be |
| 1:23.4 | put in sandwiches the centers drop out just because the moisture content so these |
| 1:27.2 | tomatoes are amazing we've got a tomato we can slice it keeps its moisture it keeps |
| 1:30.9 | its structure and it looks great in packs, it's bright red. |
| 1:34.8 | This week we're munching on a sandwich, the sandwich. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.