How to Slice a Sandwich

Reflecting tradition, a sandwich can be cut in half or in quarters.

But there are other possibilities.

Slicing a Sandwich

A sandwich can be sliced in half on the diagonal, or with a horizontal cut.

Some of us prefer the diagonal slice’s two triangles. Saying the triangles are aesthetically pleasing, they eat the tips first. In one viral tweet, a football coach illustrated his bite order. While the first two are good, he said that bite 3 was the best:

Next, we can switch to the Y-cut. Its proponents say each of the three sections is as good as the triangle’s third bite. Their reason? The filling is thickest everywhere:

Our Bottom Line: Incentive

Indeed, how we eat a sandwich depends on how we cut it. It also can determine how much we eat. In one study, participants were served sandwiches that were the same size. However, when one was cut into 16 sections and the other 32, subjects ate more of the 16-section sandwich.

So where are we? We have two possibilities.

We could leap to behavioral economics and ask why. I did find one study that focused on the interplay between the pleasure we get from food and what we want to eat that might give us some answers. In addition, we could say that slices change our incentives. And when incentives connect how much we eat to how many, it could have significance beyond a sandwich.

But I wind up suggesting less hypothesizing. Let’s just enjoy the sandwich.

My sources and more: Thanks to The Hustle newsletter for inspiring today’s post on slicing a sandwich. From there, I found more detail at The Washington Post and this past econlife post. And finally, this paper took us to the academic perspective.