You are what you eat. And if you eat sandwiches? Then you’re probably woke, I’m afraid. While the convenience food may have been invented by a degenerate earl who, legend has it, didn’t want a proper meal to interrupt his gambling, some sarnies have now been deemed politically correct by the MailOnline – who are, of course, leading experts in wokeness. The MailOnline is getting flak for a recent headline that states gen Z “are ditching English classics like ham and mustard in favour of fancy woke fillings”.
What sort of PC fillings are we talking about? Quinoa, vegan camembert and kale on artisanal sourdough with a non-binary condiment (they-onnaise)? Nope. It seems what has ruffled the MailOnline’s feathers is … chicken. According to The Great British Sandwich Study, a wholesome survey conducted by the bread maker Allinson’s, older generations are partial to a ham sandwich while gen Z prefer chicken. Most boomers also like cheddar while younger consumers are fond of fancier fillings. Pretty inoffensive stuff, right? Yet somehow this has been packaged up into a culture wars piece. It’s funny how conservatives love to accuse the left of being snowflakes, yet they’re the ones getting upset by a sandwich.
And it’s not just sandwiches. Conservatives have a hard time defining “woke” but they love using it to describe everything from asset managers BlackRock (yes, really) to beer to James Bond. A parallel economy of conservative products has popped up, with grifters pushing everything from anti-woke chocolates to razors to vitamins. There’s even an anti-woke water brand (it’s called Freedom2o), because apparently regular water is too liberal.
While it’s easy to scoff (except when it comes to sandwiches), the war on wokeness does represent an exciting market opportunity. Which is why I’d like to introduce my proprietary Woke Sandwich Index™. It’s still in beta, I just have concepts of a plan, but soon you’ll be able to measure exactly how woke your lunch is. A prawn cocktail sandwich, for example, gets a 5/10 on my woke-o-meter because it’s pink and shellfish: the edible embodiment of “fiscally conservative but socially liberal”. Chickpea fillings are obviously hummusexual. Machine-gun bacon, à la Ted Cruz, obviously scores highly when it comes to “owning the libs”. As for the most intersectional sandwich of them all? I’ll sleep on it. Tell you when I’m woke.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
