okay yes. this is. an article. i'm sorry.

here's a fun fact. there's three ways to define a hot dog, or well most types of food:
- socially
- legally
- definitionally (so, according to the dictionary).

in this article, i'm going to focus on the hot dog aspect.

socially

a hotdog is identified socially in multiple ways, from as a taco, to it's own, unique type, a hot dog.

there are two primary ways to identify a food socially:
- using the cube rule
- how it was made
- or by general consensus.

the cube rule wants to simplify how people identify foods by just. looking at it like a cube. it's honestly a really great rule, but it consideres the hot dog a taco.

the "how it was made" method just means "look at it. what do you think it looks like? that's it then."

legally

there are multiple ways to idenitfy a food legally, such as the tax way!

the new york state department of taxation and finance identifies hot dogs as sandwiches. see the article here.

but you see, for example, the vermont department of taxes doesn't specify what a sandwich is. anywhere. i did go ahead and search through the vermont tax guide for restaurants and foodservice businesses and there's nothing.

definitionally

okay so wait. if all these results don't work. what do we do here. well, we use the dictionary way!

according to the cambridge dictionary, a sandwich is

two pieces of bread with food such as cheese, salad, or meat between them:

so, hm... there's two ways we can proceed with defining this hot dog now. hot dogs use a specific type of bread that is held together at one of the long sides of it.

in this situation, where the hot dog bun is still being held together with the hot dog sausage by that bread, it is definitionally not considered a sandwich.

BUT, if the hot dog is not being held together anymore because that bun has ripped, then it's definitionally not considered a sandwich, since it's two, seperate pieces of bread with meat (a sausage, in this case) between them.

okay. i hope this has finished the war. there is no correct way to define a sandwich. it depends on the cenario.

thank you. it's almost midnight here.