If you thought that you were eating bread with your foot-long Subway meatball sandwich… think again! The Supreme Court in Ireland thinks that what you are eating is not bread by their legal definition.
Subway Sandwiches: A Matter Of Taxes
In 2016 Bookfinders Ltd presented an appeal to The Revenue Commissioners at the High Court in Ireland. Bookfinders Ltd is a company that owns a franchise of Subway outlets that operates through the region of Galway, Ireland. They prepare and sell coffees, teas, and hot sandwiches which are mainly for take-out (70-80%) due to the limited space on site to consume their products.
According to the Irish law of Value-Added Tax Act 1972 (“the Act) products that are considered staple foods such as bread pay zero VAT (tax) rate. The dispute came when Bookfinders first complained in 2006 about the application of a 13.5% VAT (tax) on its products in the period of 2004 to 2005 regardless that in their view, their products are “staple” foods. In that time Bookfinders’ claim was denied, and later on, they presented an appeal. (1)
It’s All In The Ingredients
At the Irish Supreme Court, five judges took over the Bookfinders case and proceeded to investigate if their claim was legitimate by analyzing the components of their bread product. The conclusion was that the Subway bread did not comply with the legal definition of bread in Ireland, where the sugar and fat component can not exceed the 2% of the weight of the flour ingredient in the dough. In the case of the Subway bread, it was found that the amount of sugar was 10% to the amount of flour used, five times more than the legal percentage allowed. (2)
According to Subway, their six-inch white roll has 5 grams of sugar, this amount puts them at the same level as an oreo cookie. Very sweet bread indeed!
The same was true for all of the varieties of bread available at Subway. Therefore their Italian white bread, Italian herbs and cheese, nine-grain wheat, hearty Italian, nine-grain multi-seed, and honey oat were too sweet to be called bread.
This Value-Added Tax Act 1972 has this regulation in place to be able to separate essential foods as bread from another like baked goods or pastries that need to pay the appropriate VAT (tax) rate.
Subway Sandwiches: Fake Foods
These types of regulations that are being enforced in Ireland are a good example where the wellbeing of its people is taken into consideration.
In recent years you can find more and more cases of different products not being what you thought they were. Take honey, for example. It is not clear anymore what are the necessary standards to label a product as honey or not. This gives manufacturers the freedom to add artificial sweeteners or even antibiotics that can harm to the consumers just to be able to have wider profit margins. (3)
If you want to learn more about fake foods, you can check out the book by Larry Olmsted, Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Eating and What You Can Do About it.
