How long does it really take to make a sandwich? That’s the question filmmaker Andy George asks in the video above. In it, he shows his six-month project to make a sandwich with every ingredient mined from scratch.
Phil Edwards was a senior producer for the Vox video team.
In addition to time, it took money: the video puts the cost at $1500 for George to do everything himself. That means harvesting wheat to make bread, getting honey from bees’ hives, and even piloting a boat into the Pacific Ocean, scooping up some water, and boiling it for some artisanal sea salt.
He’s released the full series on his YouTube channel, and each episode shows just how slow slow food can really be. In an age of remote mass production of food often assembled from a dazzling array of ingredients, George’s project is a good reminder of how both how dependent we are on complex supply chains and how complicated even a simple sandwich can be. The experiment isn’t limited to sandwiches, however — his project also includes attempts to make a suit and make a book.
But one question’s just as important as meditations on the nature of modern food: how did the $1,500, six-month sandwich actually taste? George ends the video with his review: “It’s not bad.”
