Who takes a 'Pack up'?

[Im a BusyBee]

My daughter and i were talking last night about buying lunchtime sandwiches, baguettes, wraps etc as opposed to taking the time to make them at home. Is it the younger generation that goes for the convenience? Do you buy yours or make them and why? (Also what age bracket would you be in!)

[Daave]

im 24 and i usually buy sanwicehs if im hungry and out and about, i work in a kitchen as a chef, so i dont need to take food to work,

it is a lot better for you to make your own sandwiches, as although you are still getting man made chemicals and artificial additives, you will always get less,

sandwiches that are made prepacked have all kinds of junk in them, and should really be avioded by the younger ones of us, as once the boby gets used to an intake of a certain chemical, it upsets the natural responses and changes your body in ways that no0-one knows about yet, this is why we hear reports saying, such and such is bad for you, or so and so is good for you, 15 years after they started using the c**p in food in the first place..

if you're daughter prefers the shop bought sandwiches, we could team up and get some nice home-makeable similar types of food for her to take to school/work /wherever, although some of them might be timeconsuming, you know exaclty what is going in them, and with the lower manmade c**p to healthy ingredients ratio, should be a better alternative.

[Im a BusyBee]

Thanks Daave.....i hadnt actually thought about the ADDED rubbish in them - kinda assumed they would be no different from the ones i make at home(im not usually thick, honest!) But i do pack up for myself, husband and son (daughter has her own house now). Would be good to come up with some interesting fillings for all of us. I love cooking generally and enjoying messing around in the kitchen, my downfall is not knowing what to 'put together' ingredient wise.

[Misky]

I'm 39 (that's the first time I've said that coz my birthday was last week), and I always bring sarnies to work that I've made at home. Not because of any additives or goodness - just because I'm such a tight-wad and hate the thought of paying �2 for a sandwich when I can buy two loaves and a load of fillings for the same price !!

[Ed Strong]

Ditto to Misky. I make sandwiches for the same monetary reasons also I know what I've put in them and the fact that I had clean hands and didn't sneeze over them while I was making them! I also make up salads and take a tin of something (like tuna mayo) to add to it. Also buy and take to work mixed nuts for snacking on as I'm a bit of a 'grazer'. BTW I'm (a young :-}) 55!

[Im a BusyBee]

Well as i said ive always made mine (or rather ours) think the youngsters maybe slightly lazy! But hey Ed youve well n truely put me off buyin any now!!!

[shaneystar2]

My son, still at home is 26 and I make his sandwiches every day for work. Prepacked sandwiches are a rip off and always seem to be loaded with mayo .Why they do this is a mystery to me. Probably to disguise inferior ingredients.When I was working I always took my own lunch with me and Mr S the same ..
At least if I make them I know what goes in them !
I am in the late errrr.......50's bracket !

[Gef]

Sorry but Daave is just talking rubbish when he mentions junk in prepacked sandwiches. Yes, there might appear to be lots of additives but these same additives (and most of them are there for a good reason) are present in the ingredients you use at home to make your own sandwiches.

Personally I always make my own (i'm 54) because I can choose the exact filling that I want.

By the way, I bought my first Subway this year - delicious.

[moon_unit]

home made is always best, cos considerably less fat (how on earth did 1 pre packed cheese sarnie i found contain 40grams of fat?!?!?!?) , and cheap and tastier too. espesh if toasted, yum. But once in a blue moon ill let myself enjoy a delish m&s one. (im 23)

[Daave]

2 part post, 1 of 2
Re GEF:

If you check the nutritional information and ingredients list you WILL find extra additives, e numbers preservatives colourings sweeteners...

A regular loaf of bread has some of these

But these sandwiches have extra colourings and preservatives in them to keep them looking fresh, yes they are chilled in vacuum packaging but everything is made specially for putting on show in a see though packet, so they are also created to stay looking nice for a few days, whereas supermarkets sell bread more or less on the day its made, and they advise you to use it within a couple of days..

Ready made sandwiches have been made in a factory so who knows whats gone on with them

Let�s take a typical brand, and a specific sandwich
Take a bacon, chicken and mayo on malted brown bread sandwich from a well known company,

bread is taken and buttered/mayo'ed, synthetically reconstructed bacon fats and flavourings are pressed into strips and put on the bread, mechanically separated reconstructed chicken breast is formed into strips and placed on the bread, long life extra pasteurised mayo is made from the cheapest ingredients they could find, the bread is coloured and sweetened, all chucked together by a 17year old foreign asylum seeker in a sweatshop factory in Nottingham, who has no formal qualifications in any kind of health and hygiene

Yes, maybe a small part exaggeration,

Would you like me to go and buy some sandwiches and quote the exact ingredients? I bet we see a whole load of numbers and words that you can�t pronounce? Let�s just simply look for E621, and see how many times it�s mentioned on the nutritional breakdown?

[Daave]

part 2 of 2


Each individual part of the breakdown on some of the sandwiches means the ingredient is sourced entirely externally, they are creating a product for the fast food industry.. Getting pieces from here and there.

The more sources the more chance of cross contamination, ten factories making products to put in one sandwich?

you will now argue that you could get contamination of food from using a supermarket to buy bread butter ham and tomatoes to make a sandwich, but these ingredients are sourced from places that they have to have proof of safe working conditions,

A supermarket isn�t going to investigate everything that goes into everything they sell, just the immediate supplier, to remove any liability.

After all of the points I've made on sourcing of food, and preparation of the ingredients...

Why the hell would you want to pay �2.50 for 2 slices of bread and about 50p worth of filling, unless you were in a real hurry?

A home made pack up for work school picnics etc might as well be homemade

These additives didn�t exist 50 years ago, and how many people who are 30 -70 years old have been on picnics as children, bet they didn�t have allergic reactions to a fiftieth of the food reactions there are now, the things added to the food is the problem

The additives and preservatives that get added into food, are not there for customer satisfaction and enjoyment, they are there so that the creators of the food and the suppliers and the shareholders get more profit and less waste


Im dragging this on now and my spelling and typing are really crap, so ill leave it at that for today..

if however you wnat me to list the full ingredients list from a shopbought sanwich, and a homemade one, including a full list of the e numbers adn addative in both, then i will, afterall i have a day off work,

[Gef]

Thanks for the extended answer Daave. I think we will just have to disagree on most of this one.

I agree that there might be more additives in a bought sandwich than a homemade one but it depends on the type of sandwich. I totally disagree with your ideas about how these sandwiches are manufactured. Do you really think that the likes of M&S and the major supermarkets have no quality control procedures in place?

As for E621 - why not name it? It's monosodium glutamate and it occurs naturally in many foodstuffs. There is no evidence whatsoever that it causes any problems.

Surely it is up to consumers to read the label and make their own decision.

However, I agree entirely with making your own. It is much cheaper and you get exactly what you want. I only buy pre-packed sandwiches when I have been unable/not had enough time to make my own.

[Gef]

moon_unit. A cheese sandwich with 40g of fat is not unusual - wheter bought or homemade. Cheese is about 40% fat and then there is the fat in the spread and the bread as well.