Like boiled eggs, beans on toast or digestive biscuits, the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich is such an everyday item it is easy to forget that it exists. While “bubble-wraps” and broccoli coffee hog the headlines, the BLT occupies a stolid middle-ground of mass consumption, widely eaten but rarely given much thought. The BLT just is. Yet the subject of this month’s How to Eat suddenly finds itself in the news.
First, the Brexit secretary, Dominic “adequate food” Raab, sought to reassure the public that, post-Brexit, there would be no disruption to food supplies. Britain would still be able to make its beloved BLT, he told reporters (#sunlituplands). It was a curious sandwich for Raab to stake his reputation on, given that the BLT originates in the US (was this a coded come-on to Trump for a trade deal?). And that a man from Danepak then predictably came out to say that, actually, no one could guarantee anything after Brexit, and, in the event of no deal, bacon prices would be likely to shoot up.
Raab then had to suffer a second humiliation when a new poll for Warburton’s suggested that, rather than the BLT being a national go-to, it is now a fading 90s’ relic. Despite coming fifth in a survey of Britain’s favourite sandwiches for rival Bird’s Eye as recently as 2016, it was recently reported that the BLT has been usurped by “cosmopolitan” fillings such as brie and cranberry, and “über trendy pulled pork”.
This will be news to anyone who considers pulled pork a bit 2015, and brie and cranberry to be the filling of 1995. But the nation has spoken. If the BLT is on the slide (once, it was also Tony Blair’s focus-grouped, carefully triangulated sandwich of choice), perhaps it just needs a little tender loving dictatorial re-examination of how it should be rendered in its most perfect form.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
