We love hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, but we have never worried about their taxonomy. In fact, we have always lived completely oblivious to a debate that little by little has emerged in social networks and that has reached notoriety in certain governmental institutions around the world. It may sound funny, but the question is this: Is a hot dog a sandwich? Wait, let’s try this one: Is a taco a sandwich?
Whether it is or not is a problem that has long divided people who like to get into pointless discussions on the Internet. Some say that a sandwich is anything between two buns, which would make a hot dog a sandwich. But some say that bread that is not in two different slices is different, and that the meat in it deserves its own separate category.
Apparently New York State says yes, ranking its famous hot dogs like sandwiches under Tax Bulletin TB-SB-835. Well, they are wrong. The Food Bucket Rule, the most surreal theory to classify food according to its shape and its architectural similarity to a square says no. And everyone who has approached the hot dog vs sandwich problem has misunderstood it. It is not about the bread and the nature of the meat. It is a problem of geometry.
A handy graphic, created by Twitter user @Phosphatide, makes it easier to understand the cube rule and another alternative nomenclature of the dishes. He drew it after the hot dog debate came up in a streaming video game I was watching.
Hotdogs aren’t sandwiches. They are tacos. I don’t make the rules. pic.twitter.com/KX0QG1yT1a
– Will Rinehart (@WillRinehart) December 10, 2021
According to the cube rule, there are eight food categories, each defined by the placement of the starch. A kind of guide to know where the bread goes and thus determine what a food really is. Only at the bottom? It’s a toast. At the top and bottom unbonded is obviously a sandwich. At the bottom and on the opposite sides is a dowel. Rolled on the top, bottom and two sides it is, according to the Rule, a sushi maki. Therefore, an enchilada is also sushi. On all sides except the top, like a quiche, it is a salad or a soup. And any completely enclosed food is a calzone.
The theory has gained so many followers on social media that there is even a web page summarizing the controversy and the need to apply this new nomenclature to food due to its structure and shape.
So what about foods that have no “sides,” like spaghetti? Simple answer: Not all foods that do not have a definite shape, or foods that do not contain, are salads. Fried rice is a salad. Mashed potato is a salad. A steak is a salad, albeit with only one ingredient. Any soupThey are just wet salads. A vanilla soy latte is technically, by the cube rule, a bean soup. And while a loaf of bread, the building block of this formula, could be a six-sided cube, it’s not a calzone – it’s just uncut toast. This applies to breads that have no filling. A plain donut is toast, but a cream filled one is a calzone.
And the pizza? “It’s just toast,” says the creator of the theory. “It’s a big piece of bread, just like a cherry pie.” A burrito is somewhat more difficult to determine. “That would be a matter of debate: it is created with a single tortilla roll, by nature it feels more like a four-sided object,” he explained. “I too would be willing to consider it as a calzone.”
Interestingly, the sandwich chain Panera tried to argue years ago in Massachusetts court that a burrito is a sandwich. They saw that the new implementation of a Qdoba establishment in a shopping center violated a contract that said they were going to be the only sandwich chain in the space, but the judge did not agree and ruled that the burrito was not a sandwich in 2006. However, the USDA Book of Food Standards and Labeling Policies describes a burrito as “a Mexican-style sandwich-like product.”
Incorrect.
After @Phosphatide posted his illustration, thousands of people intervened with other applications of the cube rule. Nigiri sushi, with the starch on the bottom, is a type of toast, one user noted. And some argued that a multi-tiered sandwich is an additional category, like a pie. Like a piece of fried chicken, if you have a nice, crispy breading, it would technically be a calzone.
How seriously you decide to take all of this is up to you. But it’s a lot of fun to look at a candy and declare it a calzone or call a cake a salad. Unless it has no wrapper, because then it would be plain toast. In the following images you can see how each “family” of food would look according to the Cube Rule.