The One Country Where Subway Bread Isn't Considered Quite Real

When is bread not bread? When you're ordering a sandwich at a Subway in Ireland. Back in 2020, the Irish Supreme Court ruled there was too much sugar in the product. In the opinion of the court's five judges, Subway's bread was more of a pastry.

The reclassification isn't because the bread tastes like cake, however. It has more to do with Ireland's Value Added Tax, which, true to its name, determines how a food item is taxed. Foods that are deemed staple items — like eggs, coffee, tea, milk, meat, cocoa, and bread — are exempt from the tax. Anything considered an indulgence, such as pastries, is hit with that tax.

Subway's bread was labeled as such because it surpassed Ireland's legal definition of bread due to that pesky sugar. Because Ireland dictates that the sugar content in a bread's flour must not exceed 2% and Subway's white and whole wheat bread has approximately 10% sugar, it failed to gain status as a staple item.

What does a yoga mat have to do with bread? That was a question many began to ask in 2014 when blogger Vani Hari began petitioning Subway to remove azodicarbonamide from its bread. The chemical is commonly found in the soles of rubber shoes, yoga mats, and even synthetic leather, but it's also used as a dough conditioner and flour whitening agent. Hari's stance focused on the possibility that the additive could break down into a carcinogenic substance, though it's unclear at what levels and under what conditions azodicarbonamide is linked to cancer in humans.

The World Health Organization has suggested that the chemical, when inhaled by workers at bakeries, posed the risk of asthma. An FDA study concluded azodicarbonamide is safe to use in cereal flour and in bread dough as a conditioner. Still, as of April 2014, Subway stopped using azodicarbonamide. The chain, however, has not changed the amount of sugar used in its breads.