The Canadian Government Wants Hilariously Specific Sandwiches

Must be cut "DIAGONALLY."

It's not uncommon for the Canadian government to ask companies to bid on food service contracts. But it's perhaps a little more uncommon for them to be this specific.

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The Department of National Defence is looking for someone who can provide sandwiches, submarines (the edible kind), and meal boxes for air force personnel in Trenton, Ont.

And according to a 35-page request for proposals released Tuesday, the air force wants a very specific set of sandwiches. So specific, in fact, that the sandwich and meal requirements eat up more than 20 pages of the document.

Here are some of the sandwich rules, as written in the tender:

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• Lunch box style wrapping;
• No vegetable or onion in product;
• All sandwiches must be spread with margarine;
• All sandwiches must be cut "DIAGONALLY".

Same goes for the submarine sandwiches, minus being cut "DIAGONALLY" — but the buns do have to be 6 inches long.

The tender even spells out the required weight of the cheese and meat.

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Can't have that sub-par 5-gram cheese gracing the ham sandwiches.

The specifications for the meal packages are just as stringent.

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For instance, one package must have "One (1) 50-60 g Joe Louis individual cake" as dessert, while one of the vegetarian meals calls for "One (1) package Chips Ahoy cookies, pkg of 4, approx 45-50g."

Note what's repeated on the right of the page: Cut the sandwiches diagonally or GTFO.

In total, the document describes in superb detail 9 types of sandwiches, 7 submarines, and 13 meal boxes.

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Translation: Probably a nightmare to make.

Oh, and the meals "must be nutritional, fulfilling and meet the standards of the Canadian Food Guide."

We don't know how much the sandwiches will cost, but in case you ever wanted to know how many sandwiches they eat over at 8 Wing Trenton...

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