People Vow to Never Eat Pre-Packaged Sandwiches After Seeing Video of How They’re Made

A sandwich, like love, is sometimes the only good thing in a person’s life. While everyone relishes homemade sandwiches, some pre-packed sandwiches seem like the best option for busy office-goers or students. Now, imagine how depressing it would be to know that your favorite sandwich is made in conditions that are unwholesome and over the top, sickly. One clip circulating on social media, shared by Science Channel (@ScienceChannel), reveals the gross process of how pre-packaged sandwiches are made in factories. The clip put off people from eating these sandwiches ever again.  

Sandwiches, these days, are go-to meals for people, especially those living in urban cities, whether alone or with family. But the aforementioned clip is seemingly turning the experience of eating a sandwich a bit gross. The appetite-killing clip, coming from a 2001 episode of Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made, takes people inside an unnamed factory, showing how sandwiches are mass-produced.  

The 5-minute clip delves into the preparation of various kinds of sandwiches. The narrator explains that once a retail outlet places an order for specific ingredients, the factory sets up its assembly lines accordingly to make sandwiches. At this point, the footage shows a factory worker stuffing a machine with bulky loaves of bread cut out from the top. The worker manually inspects the slices, monitoring them for holes or any other flaws. The machine then cuts and separates these slices, spewing them out onto a blue belt. Here, the bread slices are glazed with swirly dollops of butter poured from the automated nozzle of a robot.

The buttered slices are propelled in the belt towards the “production line,” where an automated depositor squirts globs of mayonnaise as requested by the customer. The camera then zooms into a slice lying on top of the belt. A worker manually picks up a clump of yellowish shredded cheddar cheese from a basket and plonks it over the mayonnaise-laced bread. The video shows that the worker adds this cheese using only his bare hands, with no gloves on. The slices are stacked in pairs to form sandwiches. Elsewhere in the clip are the hands of a woman worker, adding cheese to the slices. The wedding band glittering in her hands seemed to be coming in contact with every slice she laid her hands on, something that was enough to make people squirm their noses.

The sandwiches are then sent to the cutter, which “works like an oscillating saw. The vertical blade oscillating at high speed as the sandwich travels through it,” the narrator explained. He mentioned that some of these sandwiches are mass-produced in “fully automated assembly lines” wherein “a robot suctions up bread slices and places them on a moving belt. Positioning plates descend and adjust the slices so they’ll be perfectly settled under the nozzles, which dispense the sandwich ingredients.” At the next station, robotic arms studded with suction cups grab the empty slices and flip them over onto the filled slices.

In the next step, an “ultrasonic knife” cuts the sandwiches into two parts using vibrations produced by high-frequency sound waves. The robotic arms flip the two halves of the sandwiches on top of each other, stacking them for the final packaging. The video left thousands of people horrified. “It’s great how the workers use their bare hands to feel the connection of everyone before and after them who has touched the sandwich,” said @Danthemilkmanog. @ddrjake commented, “It's been years since I've bought a premade sandwich, and after seeing this, I can confidently say it will be many more years to come before I buy another.” @mitalidas2481 exclaimed in horror, “Thank you for this video. No more eating packaged sandwiches!”

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