Shakespeare’s convenience food is still on the menu
St George’s Day on Saturday April 23rd is not only the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare it is also the start of Great British Beef Week!
British beef was a firm favourite for theatregoers to Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theatre in London during the Elizabethan era.
It was a quick and easy convenience food, to be enjoyed ready cooked from a roasting spit of half an oxen between thick slices of bread.So it comes as no surprise that today the humble sandwich is still the staple of Britain’s mealtimes - breakfast, lunch and dinner, as an easy to make nutritious food. With over 5.6 billion sandwiches eaten in the last year alone, the British sandwich has no competition with its closest rival being Italian meals at 1.9 billion.
New research into understanding the eating habits of Britain was completed by Ladies in Beef to support the launch of Great British Beef week and showed that sandwiches are still firmly on the menu.
The research via Kantar Worldpanel showed that people now spend only 31 minutes preparing larger meals and a tiny 10 minutes on making their sandwiches Vs an hour on a meal a generation ago. It’s no surprise then that we would need 60,000 Wembley stadiums to seat all the sandwiches Britain eats in a year!
Though with 52.5% of these sandwiches containing meat and only 5.5% of those being cooked from raw Britain really is now relying on convenience for the most important staple in the weekly diet. However research also showed that “Enjoying the taste” and “Filling” are two of the main reasons people are choosing sandwiches, meaning that with enough speedy recipe solutions there is a chance to get Britain cooking again.
Jilly Greed Co-Founder of Ladies in Beef said “Sandwiches are featured so heavily in the British diet it is hugely important that we make them as nutritious & tasty as possible. And to help, this year, Great British Beef Week is supporting the Great British butty!
Beef up your Butty is a cheeky look at Britain’s favourite meal and will educate sandwich lovers on the 8 vitamins and minerals that beef provides, and show how fast and easy it is to create a 2 minute thin cut steak butty or use up leftovers from the Sunday roast.”
After all, if a sandwich is all you are having for tea, it might as well be a PROPER butty.
