“We don’t take one-and-a-half-hour lunches anymore,” says Parisian Geraldine Desailloug. “The French now eat convenience foods like the English. [Their] sandwiches are very popular.”
Madame Desailloug — who works for Food From Britain, a development consultancy for UK food and drink producers — says that though the French still tend to look down on [British] cooking, they are becoming increasingly enamoured of the great British culinary invention of placing fillings between two slices of bread…
The most pronounced upsurge in sandwich consumption occurred when the French working week was cut to 35 hours in 2000 — meaning business had to be squeezed into a shorter day.
“It caused a lifestyle change,” says Jim Winship of the British Sandwich Association. “People couldn’t afford to sit in restaurants for hours in the afternoon as they had before.” [BBC News]
BBC News. “Vive le sandwich anglais!” BBC News. 6 April 2004. <news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3603353.stm> (12 April 2004).