The 32 ingredients in a handmade egg sandwich

A food columnist at The Guardian makes note of the absolutely stunning number of ingredients incorporated into modern food. Having bought a “handmade” egg sandwich on a train, he organizes its ingredients into a vertical list, as if he were about to try to shop for these scientific-sounding things. The visual effect is startling and chastening. Each column – there are two – is preposterously long, for the sandwich has no fewer than 32 ingredients, most unknown to a domestic cook. Eggs, for instance, come in at number 22, just after potassium sorbate... In Britain, he tells us, we eat an awful lot of highly seductive, hyper-palatable, ultra-processed food – it comprises 57% of our diet, a figure higher than anywhere else in Europe – and it makes us hungrier, or less satisfied, than we should be, with the result that we eat more of it, and put on more weight.