Growing up, Brittany Powell of Low-Commitment Projects probably didn't listen to her mom not to play with her food ... and that's a good thing! She has just created a series called Sandwich Artist, which pays homage to some of the world's most famous artworks.

Can you guess which is what? Link - via Laughing Squid

Lunch Disguise Sandwich Bag – $4.45

Have you resolved to start taking sack lunches to work? Protect your precious cargo with the Lunch Disguise Sandwich Bag from the NeatoShop. This hilarious box of 20 sandwich bags, with two designs, will help prevent sneaky coworkers from pilfering your tasty treats.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Sandwich Bag fun!

Link

by Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research staff

The Ham Sandwich Theorem has been a treat and a spur to mathematicians for more than half a century. It first cropped up in a branch of mathematics called algebraic topology. The theorem describes a particular truth about certain shapes. Most published papers on the topic make a hash of explaining it to anyone who is not an algebraic topologist. But the authors of a 2001 paper called “Leftovers from the Ham Sandwich Theorem” wrapped up an important little leftover: they put the idea into clear language.

“Leftovers from the Ham Sandwich Theorem,” Graham Byrnes, Grant Cairns, and Barry Jessup, The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 108, no. 3, March 2001, pp. 246-9.

The authors are at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. The Ham Sandwich Theorem, they wrote, “rescues the careless sandwich maker by guaranteeing that it is always possible to slice the sandwich with one cut so that the ham and both slices of bread are each divided into equal halves, no matter how haphazardly the ingredients are arranged.”

For a while, most ham sandwich theorizing dealt with simple cases. A paper called “Computing a Ham-Sandwich Cut in Two Dimensions,” published in 1986, is typical.

Detail from the Edelsbrunner/Waupotitsch study “Computing a Ham-Sandwich Cut in Two Dimensions.”

“Computing a Ham-Sandwich Cut in Two Dimensions,” H. Edelsbrunner and R. Waupotitsch, Journal of Symbolic Computation, vol. 2, no. 2, June 1986, pp. 171–8.

It considered only ham sandwiches that had been flattened flatter than even the chintziest cook would dare devise. Mathematicians often do things this way, first considering the extreme cases, digesting those thoroughly, and only then moving on to more substantial versions. Indeed, the “Computing a Ham-Sandwich Cut in Two Dimensions” paper itself contains a section called “Getting Rid of Degenerate Cases”.

People did solve the mystery of slicing a thick ham sandwich. And inevitably, they developed a hunger for more substantial problems.

In 1990, Yugoslavian theorists wrote in the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society about “An Extension of the Ham Sandwich Theorem.”

“An Extension of the Ham Sandwich Theorem”, Rade T. Živaljevi? and Sinisa T. Vre?ica, Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, vol. 22, no. 2, 1990, pp. 183–6.

The authors are at Mathematics Institute Knez Mihailova and at Faculty of Mathematics Studentski, both in Beograd, Yugoslavia.

The Ham Sandwich Theorem Revisited…
Partly from nostalgia, partly with an eye to the future, these two mathematicians paused in 1992 to take a refreshing look back at the ham sandwich question:

“The Ham Sandwich Theorem Revisited,” Sinisa T. Vre?ica and Rade T. Živaljevi?, Israel Journal of Mathematics, vol. 78, no. 1, February 1992, pp. 21–32.

(Image credit: Flickr user jeffreyw)

…and Generalized
Elsewhere in 1992, a theorist at Yaroslav State University in Russia published a paper called “A Generalization of the Ham Sandwich Theorem.”

“A Generalization of the Ham Sandwich Theorem,” V.L. Dol’nikov and P.G. Demidov, Matematicheskie Zametki [Mathematical Notes], vol. 52, no. 2, 1992, pp. 27–37.

The authors explain:

[We] consider a group of problems connected with the “three-layered sandwich problem,” posed by Ulam, and the Neumann-Rado theorem on division of measures. In the ham sandwich problem it is required to cut a ham sandwich of bread with butter and cheese such that each part contains exactly half of each of the three ingredients.

That same year, a team of hungry American, Czech, and German mathematicians assembled a master collection of recipes for slicing ham sandwiches. Mathematicians almost never use the word “recipe”, so they called their paper “Algorithms for Ham-Sandwich Cuts.”

“Algorithms for Ham-Sandwich Cuts,” Chi-Yuan Lo, J. Matoušek, and W. Steiger, Discrete and Computational Geometry, vol. 11, no. 1, December 1994, pp. 433–52.

Research then moved on to exotic, distantly-related questions, exemplified by a 1998 monograph called “Green Eggs and Ham.”

“Green Eggs and Ham,” M.J. Kaiser and S. Hossaien Cheraghi, Mathematical and Computer Modeling, vol. 28, no. 1, 1998, pp. 91–99.

The authors, at Wichita State University, Kansas, U.S.A., explain:

A dish of ham and eggs is required to be divided equally by a single straight knife cut. A constructive solution procedure is described through the introduction of a balance functional and a geometric optimization problem. The two- and three-, dimensional cases are illustrated by example.

Whence the Ham Sandwich Theorem?
And who started this? A 2004 paper called “The Early History of the Ham Sandwich Theorem” took care of another lingering leftover: it identified the inventor. Mathematico- historians W.A. Beyer and Andrew Zardecki of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, U.S.A., say that it was a Jewish theorist who introduced the ham sandwich into mathematical theory. Beye and Zardecki trace the theorem back to a 1945 paper by the Polish mathematician Hugo Steinhaus that “represents work Steinhaus did in Poland on the ham sandwich problem in World War II while hiding out with a Polish farm family.”

“The Early History of the Ham Sandwich Theorem,”
W.A. Beyer and Andrew Zardecki, The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 111, no. 1, January 2004, pp. 58–61.

The authors say:

The following theorem is the well-known ham sandwich theorem: for any three given sets in Euclidean space, each of finite outer Lebesgue measure, there exists a plane that bisects all three sets, i.e., separates each of the given sets into two sets of equal measure. The early history of this result seems not to be well known. Stone and Tukey attribute the theorem to Ulam. They say they got the information from a referee. Is this correct? The problem appears in The Scottish Book as problem 123. The problem is posed by Steinhaus. A reference is made to the pre-World War II journal Mathesis Polska (Latin for “Polish Mathematics”). This journal is not easy to locate…

The Miraculous Years 2009 and 2010
The years 2009 and 2010 were anni mirabili for Ham Sandwich Theorem research. Consider just a few of the papers published during that time.

“Dynamic Ham-Sandwich Cuts in the Plane,” Timothy G. Abbott, Michael A. Burr, Timothy M. Chan, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, John Hugg, Daniel Kane, Stefan Langerman, Jelani Nelson, Eynat Rafalin, Kathryn Seyboth, and  Vincent Yeung, Computational Geometry, vol. 42,  no. 5, July 2009, pp. 419–28. “Ham Sandwich with  Mayo: A Stronger Conclusion to the Classical Ham Sandwich Theorem,” John H. Elton and Theodore P.  Hill, arXiv:0901.2589v2, 2009.

The authors of the latter paper, at Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia, U.S.A., report:

The conclusion of the classical ham sandwich theorem of Banach and Steinhaus may be strengthened: there always exists a common bisecting hyperplane that touches each of the sets, that is, intersects the closure of each set. Hence, if the knife is smeared with mayonnaise, a cut can always be made so that it will not only simultaneously bisect each of the ingredients, but it will also spread mayonnaise on each. A discrete analog of this theorem says that n finite nonempty sets in n-dimensional Euclidean space can always be simultaneously bisected by a single hyperplane that contains at least one point in each set.

Other discussions followed:

“Generalized Ham-Sandwich Cuts,” William Steiger and Jihui Zhao, Discrete and Computational Geometry, vol. 44, no. 3, 2010, 535-45. “Uneven Splitting of Ham Sandwiches,” Felix Breuer, Discrete and Computational Geometry, vol. 43, no. 4, 2010, pp. 876–92.

From the Ham Sandwich to the Pizza Pie
The future, which of course is not truly predictable (according to most current theories, anyway), appears to include the continued diversification of Ham Sandwich theorizing. We conclude with a mention of a possible harbinger of things to come:

“From the Ham Sandwich to the Pizza Pie: A Simultaneous Z m Equipartition of Complex Measures,” Steven Simon, arXiv:1006.4614v8, 2010.

Acknowledgement
Thanks to Stanley Eigen for bringing the Ham Sandwich Theorem to our attention.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2011 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

The McRib sandwich is back, and with it, the horde of cult-like fans of the McDonald's pork sandwich.

Despite its name, the McRib sandwich actually contains no rib meat. But what exactly is it made of?

The Week explains some of the 70 ingredients of the McRib (which you may want to skip if you're a fan of the sandwich):

How many ingredients are there?
At face value, the sandwich contains just pork, onions, and pickle slices slathered in barbecue sauce and laid out on a bun. But the truth is, there are roughly 70 ingredients. The bun alone contains 34, says TIME's Melnick. In addition to chemicals like ammonium sulfate and polysorbate 80, the most egregious may be azodicarbonamide — "a flour-bleaching agent most commonly used in the manufactur[ing] of foamed plastics like gym mats the and soles of shoes." According to McDonald's own ingredient list, the bun also includes calcium sulfate and ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, among other chemicals.

Link (Photo: The Impulsive Buy/Flickr)

“He said he was gonna go eat it in the corner and he ended up running out the front door, down the parking lot with the sandwich,” said Kelly Donatelli, who served him. “Just very bizarre. It was weird.”

That’s when he tried to make his getaway in a forklift. Ross Township police caught him.

“Apparently he was tired of walking and he saw the forklift with the keys in it and seemed like a good idea at the time,” Detective Brian Kohlhepp said.

Faulkner faces theft charges for both the sandwich (a misdemeanor) and the forklift (a felony). Link -via Breakfast Links

The burrito question may well be determined, but the definition of a sandwich leaves plenty of wiggle room for interpretation. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, a sandwich comprises “two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between,” but then continues to include “one slice of bread covered with food.” This would indicate that hotdogs, bruscetta, and even biscuits and gravy are sandwiches.

Let’s take a look at the difference in sandwich conservatives’ and liberals’ opinions on the matter. In the right corner, we have the “two pieces of bread with filling, no variation” group. This excludes commonly accepted sandwich derivatives like stuffed pitas. On a technicality, they also must include the quesadilla unless the decision is made to restrict the sandwich definition to include only leavened bread. A self-described Sandwich Orthodox friend explained to me that any food which requires cooking before sandwiching is not a sandwich, even a hamburger–”If it can’t be made in the woods, it isn’t a sandwich.” What about grilled cheese, dude?

On the other side, there are those who, like Ian Chillag of NPR’s Sandwich Monday, will accept any “protein wrapped in carb.” A close inspection tells us this would be sweeping enough to qualify sushi, fried cheese and those bizarre egg-and-cheese toaster strudel as sandwiches, in addition to any burrito, taco, this thing or Hot Pocket, while excluding traditional sandwiches (like jelly or veggie). How is a hotdog a sandwich if a veggie sub isn’t?

If your definition relies on portability or hand-to-mouth eatability, then out go the Dagwood, Merriam-Webster’s second definition and anything messy enough to require a fork. Likewise, any number of clearly non-sandwich foods could be included here.

Consider also the breadless sandwich: lettuce wraps, vegetable substitutes and *shudder* the KFC Double Down. They’re sandwiched, yes, but are they sandwiches?

Neatoramanauts, settle this debate: What is your definition of a sandwich, and what is definitely not a sandwich?

Sources:

• Is a Burrito a Sandwich?
• Wikipedia: Sandwich
• That’s a Wrap: The Truth Behind the Great Sandwich Debate
• Burrito not a sandwich, judge rules in Panera-vs.-Qdoba tiff
• Merriam-Webster: “sandwich”
• Is a quesadilla a sandwich?

Image

(Image credit: Flickr user Messiah Divine)

Sandwich Crust Cutters – $2.95

Are you trying to find ways to make mealtime more fun? You need a Sandwich Crust Cutter from the NeatoShop.  This nifty little kitchen gadget quickly cuts the crust off your sandwich leaving an awesome shape. It is perfect for cutting sandwiches down to size so that they fit better in little hands.

Sandwich Crust Cutters currently come in 6 fabulous styles:

• FlipperBytes
• BatBytes
• ButterflyBytes
• TrainBytes
• DynoBytes
• and SweetBytes

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Back to School items!

Link

Do you hate having crust on your sandwich?  Do you love bats and all things spooky? You need the BatBytes Sandwich Crust Cutter from the NeatoShop.  Who needs fine dining when you can eat delicious homemade bat sandwiches at a fraction of the price.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fantastic Cooking Gadgets!

Link

A baguette stuffed to the brim with meat and pickled veggies, the banh mi is fusion food at its best. But be warned: it’s usually sprinkled with cilantro, so don’t be surprised by an herby kick when you take a bite.

Find more sandwich styles from around the world at National Geographic Traveler. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

Sean Christensen interviews a woman about a very important sandwich she made for her brother many years ago. Even small things can become an unforgettable part of your family history. -via The Daily What

In the early 20th century, people across the world cut their own bread, one slice at a time. But in 1902, a Missouri inventor named Otto Frederick Rohwedder couldn’t get his bread slices to fit inside the slots of his toaster. Thus began his 26-year quest to invent a bread-slicing machine. Although Rohwedder had a prototype as early as 1912, he soon realized that cutting the bread wasn’t enough; he also needed to package the slices in such a way that they wouldn’t go stale. By 1928, Rohwedder had modified his machine to wrap the bread in addition to cutting it, and his first loaf of sliced bread was sold that July in Chillicothe, Mo.

But just because it sold, that doesn’t mean that it sold well. For years, sliced bread was a commercial flop. Consumers thought the loaves looked sloppy, and bakeries hesitated to invest in the machines. That all changed in the 1930s, when Wonder Bread hit the shelves. Lured by its colorful red, yellow, and blue packaging, Americans picked up the sandwich slices and put down their bread knives for good.

PEANUT BUTTER, A VEGETARIAN GODSEND

Health guru Dr. John Harvey Kellogg spent the late 1800s extolling the virtues of vegetarianism at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, a spa that welcomed the likes of Thomas Edison, William Howard Taft, and Amelia Earhart. There, Dr. Kellogg also perfected new forms of vegetarian cuisine, including breakfast cereal and peanut butter. He even toured the country, lecturing about the spread’s health benefits. In fact, one of these talks possibly changed the course of legume history. When Dr. Kellogg spoke at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, George Washington Carver was in attendance; that may have been what piqued his interest in the peanut.

AMERICA IS READY FOR THIS JELLY

During its early years, peanut butter was a delicacy, only to be served in upscale tearooms. Chefs combine it with beef, pimientos, Worcestershire sauce, and other ingredients, with limited success. But around 1900, peanut butter met jelly, and the sweet-salty combination was a hit with kids. As the commercial peanut butter industry took off, the cost of the spread dropped dramatically. By the time the Great Depression hit, hungry Americans were relying on the PB&J as a cheap, nutritious meal, and later, during World War II, soldiers were scarfing them down on the battlefield. The sandwich has been a national touchstone ever since. Nowadays, the average American child eats about 1,500 PB&J sandwiches before finishing high school.

THE PASSION OF THE CRUST

In 2000, the J.M. Smucker company came to the aid of parents everywhere by patenting and marketing the first crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The frozen, disc-shaped Uncrustables quickly became a top-selling product. All was well until 2001, when a small Michigan grocery store started selling its own crustless PB&Js, and Smucker’s sued them for patent infringement. But after a thorough investigation, the US Patent & Trademark Office ruled that the Smucker’s version was nothing special. After all, cutting the crust off children’s sandwiches is practically an American tradition.

CAUGHT BREAD-HANDED

In January 1943, US government officials put the kibosh on sliced bread, arguing that it was detrimental to the war effort. They claimed the bread went stale too fast, wasting precious wheat, and that the metal in the slicing machines would be better used for guns, tanks, and ships. When the ban was lifted a few months later, the country rejoiced. A headline in The New York Times read, “Housewives’ Thumbs Safe Again!”

THE MOST EXPENSIVE PEANUT BUTTER IN AMERICA

Want to know who makes the priciest peanut butter on the market? The federal government, of course! For about $220 per 6-ounce jar, The National Institute of Standards and Technology sells what it calls “Standard Reference Material No. 2387,” a pristine peanut butter spread. The price tag comes with a precise analysis of the peanut butter’s nutritional composition, including levels of vitamins, minerals, fats, amino acids, and aflatoxins, the carcinogens produced by mold in peanut crops. Food manufacturers use the spread for quality control, comparing it to their own products. Sadly, this means that no one actually eats the gold-standard peanut butter; it’s fed exclusively to laboratory equipment.

(Image credit: Flickr user jpellgen)

It would take 500 million pounds of peanut butter to cover the floor of the Grand Canyon, which happens to be how much Americans consume each year.

__________________________

The above article was written by Megan Wilde. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the July-August 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

Anything is better if it’s made with bacon, put in a can, or called “tactical“. Hence the Candwich, which is either a peanut butter & jelly sandwich or chicken sandwich. In a can.

The company has gained public attention due to a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into a money manager’s allegedly fraudulent activities, some of which were invested in Mark One Foods, the company that owns Candwich.

In the meantime, Candwich is still on hold and, sadly, not yet available consumers.

Link via Geekosystem | Image: Mark One Foods

School administrators have found an effective way to crack down on students who engage in food fights: Let them eat cheese. And nothing else.

Students at Atlantic City High School were served plain cheese sandwiches for two days this week as punishment for a cellphone-coordinated food fight that broke out recently.

One parent likened the American cheese between two dry slices of plain white bread to "a prison meal."

Link (Photo: Shutterstock)

I collect links to bizarre niche blogs. This one takes the cake for sheer randomness. Selleck Waterfall Sandwich delivers exactly what it says -a collection of images all combining actor Tom Selleck and a sandwich on a background featuring a waterfall. The site even has a theme song, if you can call it a song. The picture here stars a Spam sandwich. Link -via mental_floss

Mark Northeast is a UK-based food artist who creates sandwiches in the forms of unique images, such as the caterpillar above, to encourage kids to eat a varied diet. He hopes to soon come out with a photobook of his work.

Link via Urlesque

From the food blog Insanewiches:

The Rubix Cube has confounded us for years. Maybe the sandwich version of this puzzling brain teaser will do the same. The Rubix Cubewich contains cubes of pastrami, kielbasa, pork fat, salami, and two types of cheddar.

Link via Geekologie

Some chefs have probably never heard the phrase "too much of a good thing" as they create some of the world’s most stuffed food. WomansDay takes a look at 9 stuffed-to-the-brim food creations, like this db Burger Double Truffle from db Bistro Moderne above:

This specialty sandwich, available at db Bistro Moderne in Manhattan, sells for a whopping $150—but it’s certainly something to marvel at. Stuffed inside the burger are braised short ribs along with a flavorful helping of foie gras, which is topped with 20 grams of shaved black truffles and served inside a crispy Parmesan bun.

Bon appétit! Link

Jessie Oleson of Cakespy explains:

Grilled cheese is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread. After all, it is sliced bread–with the added awesomeness of cheese and butter. Can it really get any better?

After being hit with what can only be described as a stroke of pure genius, I can definitively say yes. It can get better.

Say hello to the grilled cheesecake sandwich.

"Is this serious?" you may be asking yourself.

Oh yes. Made out of slivered cheesecake layered between slices of buttered pound cake, this sandwich is serious all right–as serious as a heart attack.

Link

A grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup always provided yummy comfort on cold days, but gastronomes haven’t stopped there. Check out ten mouthwatering extentions of our childhood favorite during April, which is National Grilled Cheese month. I’m kinda fiending for the first one, the $15 Grilled Cheese.

This stacked creation was born out of Ontario-based chef Randy Feltis’s adoration for exotic cheeses and thick-cut bread. Melted in between the garlic-, parsley- and butter-seasoned loaf lies a brilliant blend of brie, aged Cheddar, Italian Asiago and Havarti cheeses.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ahammel.

Do you hate being the only person that doesn’t bring lunch to work or school in a brown bag? Well, now you can keep up your old ways while following the bag trend with this entirely felt lunch set. If you’re interested, instructions are available to make your own chips, bag, sandwich and treat from felt. They even tell you how to sew a plastic sandwich bag for good measure.

Link Via CraftZine

In the “AnnaTheRed’s Bento Factory” blog you can find instructions on how to make your own Wall-E sandwich using wheat bread, turkey, mayonnaise, cheese and blueberries.

Link – Botropolis via Gizmodo

The woman, 25, was seen in hospital complaining of short 10-second episodes of feeling "light-headed, occasionally nauseous, and suddenly and alarmingly unwell".

On more than one occasion she had collapsed. The problem had started when she was aged 15, sometimes recurring several times a week. [...] The episodes tended to occur when the woman consumed certain types of food, particularly sandwiches and fizzy drinks.

Turns out, her condition is called "swallow syncope," a rare medical condition where swallowing triggers the nerve reflexes that cause the heart to stop temporarily: Link – via Look At This