Say cheese!

Toastie replaces traditional bacon butty as the nation’s favourite lunchtime treat

IT is a staple of the British diet. But the bacon butty’s reign as the nation’s favourite sandwich is toast.

In a closely fought contest, the cheese toastie has been named our top sandwich – knocking the traditional bacon butty off the top spot.

A plain cheese filling rounded off the top three, while tuna proved the most unpopular.

The study, conducted by the online food ordering app Foodhub, asked 2,000 individuals to pick their favourite lunchtime treat.

Eight per cent backed the cheese toastie (pictured) against 7 per cent who picked the bacon butty.

The sausage sandwich proved best of the rest, coming in fourth with 5 per cent, beating prawn mayonnaise and egg mayonnaise.

The national survey investigated the UK’s sandwich habits for National Sandwich Day today. Foodhub spokesman Emma Stockman said: ‘Britain is a nation of sandwich lovers. Last year there was no surprise to see bacon named our favourite sandwich filling, however, we were shocked to see cheese toastie has topped the charts this time. Our study also saw the hamburger finish within the top ten, reigniting the debate about whether a burger can be classed as a sandwich or not.’

The survey also discovered that nearly one in ten prefer their sandwich dry, with no condiment at all.

And the south-west of England proved to be the ketchup capital, with more than a quarter of those from the region naming tomato sauce as their favourite sandwich condiment.

One in five of those surveyed chose mayonnaise, followed by butter (16 per cent), ketchup (14 per cent), hot sauce (11 per cent) and salad cream (10 per cent).

Elsewhere, there is a generational divide on what bread we like our sandwiches on. Those aged 65 and over overwhelmingly voted wholemeal as the best ( 18 per cent), whereas those aged between 25 and 34 named sourdough (10 per cent) as number one.

For readers of The Mail+, however, the bacon butty remains the favourite sandwich. It secured 42 per cent of the 1,528 votes registered last night. Second was the cheese toastie, on 23 per cent, with egg mayonnaise, prawn mayonnaise and a sausage sandwich all polling 8 per cent.