Eating Better Sandwich Survey 2022

Reports | Published 22 June 2022

Food service and food retail greatly influence how we shop and what we eat and holding them to account is key to shifting the dial to get us all eating better. Eating Better’s new report “Sandwiches Unwrapped 2022” looks at changes in vegetarian and plant-based sandwich ranges against meat-based ones, using the sandwich sector as a proxy to track and benchmark retailer commitment to sustainable eating. The analysis shows the sandwich aisle is still too meaty and plant-based too pricey.

Retailers and manufacturers /Food service

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Key findings

84% of sandwiches in the UK high street contain meat, fish or cheese, a drop of only 1% on our last sandwich survey in 2019.
Meat is the main ingredient in 59% of the sample we surveyed. Of those 38% contain red or processed meat and 28% contain chicken.
More than 50% of sandwiches, with high salt or high fat levels, contain meat.
Alternative protein as a meat-free sandwich filling has gone up by 620% since our 2019 survey.
Tesco has reduced its meat-free sandwich offer by 28% on 2019 figures, whilst Morrisons and Asda have removed their plant-based sandwich options entirely.
On average, plant-based options are the most expensive sandwich type, e.g Sainsbury’s plant-based offer is 15% more expensive than its meat offer.
The range has decreased across the board since our 2019 survey, shrinking by more than 50% at some outlets.
Food service is out performing food retail, in terms of providing more sustainable offers, with 34% of their sandwiches meat-free and half of this is plant-based.

Find out more in our "Sandwiches Unwrapped 2022" report.