After becoming a staple of cosy afternoon teas and schoolchildren's lunch boxes, sandwiches have been unfairly branded as a 'safe' option for lunch.
Here to break that myth into lots of stunned pieces, we've been discovering the secret double-life that our sociopathic breaded friend has been leading. After reading, and wincing, at these 10 sandwich variations, you'll probably feel just as betrayed as we do right now.
Let us know if you have any better contenders at the bottom.
Now, in no particular order...
(Images: Rex Features, Mat Hyde, Wiki Commons, Adrian Fiorino, Adsum, Marshall Astor, YouTube)
1. THE LUTHER BURGER
Managing to push our acceptance of sweet mixed with savoury even more, this burger keeps things pretty simple, but for the doughnut that holds it in place. It's apparently been named after Luther Vandross, which may explain some of his severe weight issues...
2. THE LASANDWICH
Oh Lasandwich, how you continue to bewitch us with your utter ridiculousness. The cold, disgusting alternative to the warm, delicious Italian favourite kindly provided us with cheese-fuelled nightmares and a temporary increase in heart rate. Makers Tesco have since followed it up with the Strawberries & Cream sandwich, which somehow manages to make even less sense than this one.
3. THE MCDONALD SANDWICH
The obligatory most expensive sandwich ever entry on the list comes from those posh folk at Selfridges. Named after its creator, chef Scott McDonald, the £85 meal uses wagyu beef, fresh lobe foie gras, black truffle mayonnaise, brie de meaux, rocket, red pepper and mustard confit and English plum tomatoes. For £85, we'd expect a plaque too.
4. THE DOUBLE DOWN
If you're in the small minority of people who love sandwiches but hate the stupid, foul-tasting bread that's always included, you'll be a big fan of this one. The KFC special used two fried chicken fillets to house bacon, two kinds of cheese and special sauce. Oh and they also used just under a day's allowance of sodium. Oh and no that wouldn't stop us from trying one.
5. THE BIG SANDWICH
While sandwiches might aim to be healthy, their unavoidable bread content makes them a fattier sibling to the smug salad. This super-sized sandwich is embracing this black, chubby sheep status and aiming instead to cause a heart attack to anyone brave enough to try. Containing a mixture of pepperoni, burgers, sausages, bacon, crisps, cheese, chicken nuggets and other pulse-quickening ingredients, the final product contained around 50,000 calories. You can see them make magic here.
6. THE TASTYKAKE SANDWICH
Now, we're not entirely opposed to combining sweet with savoury. In fact, we still mourn the loss of chocolate pretzels from UK shelves. But when it comes to combining chocolate covered, peanut butter flavoured sponge cakes with cheese burgers, we're not so sure. These strange sliders were an actual dish in Adsum restaurant in Philadelphia.
7. THE MELO
When making a sandwich, skimping on the fillings is up there with burning books and drowning puppies in our mind. So you can imagine how our eyes and jaw widened when we saw this monster from the Carnegie Deli in New York. Named after Knicks player Carmelo Anthony, the intimidatingly tall sandwich is made from salami, pastrami and bacon. We think we've had this dream before.
8. THE CANDWICH
Useful perhaps only in the event of an impending apocalypse, the sandwich-in-a-can is every bit as suspect as it sounds. A long shelf life, no need for refrigeration and achilling selection of flavours (including BBQ chicken and pepperoni pizza), make this a meal we'd happily skip. Again and again.
9. THE RUBIK'S CUBEWICH
After being reminded enough times, we're conditioned to believe that we shouldn't ever play with our food. This sandwich is therefore quite a frustrating proposition. Built like a Rubik's Cube yet with cold meats and cheese, it also looks pretty frustrating to eat. So, yeah it's cool and all that but we're sort of annoyed now.
10. THE FRIED BRAIN SANDWICH
Unless you're dining near the Temple of Doom or you're Hannibal Lector, chances are you're probably not big into eating brains. You'll therefore be every bit as repulsed by this sandwich as we are. Sliced calves brains get deep-fried in batter and served at a number of mid-western eateries. Well, they did before BSE got all serious and stuff. Now they've been replaced by pigs' brains. Much better, obviously.