A Frank Discussion

The other night on his show, Stephen Colbert reopened the occasional debate one sees on the Internet — and Thank God we don't have anything more important than this to argue about these days — as to whether a hot dog is a sandwich. I do not know why some people are willing — nay, eager — to die on the hill of insisting it isn't.

A sandwich is something you eat that consists of just about anything (meat, fish, poultry, peanut butter, jam, vegetables, et al) between two pieces of bread. If you put a blob of Worcestershire Sauce between two slices of bread, it's a Worcestershire Sauce sandwich. And come to think of it, you don't even need two slices of bread as proven by the many open-face sandwiches that are served in this great land of ours. Why do we need a more complicated definition than something edible on bread?

But Mr. Colbert, when asked what makes a hot dog not a sandwich, answered — I'm quoting now — "The fact that the two pieces of bread do not separate." He did not specify, and I'm guessing has no idea, who made that rule and how it was that they had the legal or even the moral authority to make a rule which all of us should respect.

Which brings me to Exhibit A and Only: Let us pause and look upon one of the most frequently-made and eaten sandwiches in the world today. I am speaking (of course) of the Subway® sandwich…

According to this page — and if it isn't right, I'll bet it's close — the Subway chain serves 5,300 sandwiches every 60 seconds, which is roughly 320,000 sandwiches every hour. That's zillions a year and that isn't even counting the ones made by Togo's and Jersey Mike's and dozens of other chains and hundreds of thousands of business establishments around the world that make things we all call "sandwiches" in this format.

I believe that if you examine any one of these "food items" (yes, I'm being a little loose with the language), you will see that the bread on top and the bread on the bottom are no more separable than the bread on the top and bottom of a hot dog. So if a hot dog is not a sandwich, neither are millions of "food items" we eat each day and refer to as "sandwiches." I rest my case.

And now that that's settled, let's get on to a more pressing matter — like does a drinking straw have one hole or two?  Or if as most say, a tomato is a fruit, does that mean ketchup is a form of jam?