Forget the Pixel, Google Also Settled the Hot Dog-Sandwich Debate for Us

Amid the talk about the Pixel Fold, Android 14 and everything else at Google I/O 2023, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed one of the most pressing questions of our time: Is a hot dog a sandwich? But he didn’t affirm or deny whether a hot dog is a sandwich, rather he claimed a third option. 

“It’s more like a taco,” Pichai said. “The bread goes around it.”

But Pichai is wrong. A hot dog isn’t more like a taco than a sandwich. A hot dog is a taco. We’ve been asking the wrong question this entire time. Walk with me.

Picture a taco in your mind. What do you see? Maybe some meat, some vegetables, maybe a sauce, depending on what you like, and it’s all held together by a single starch-based food product that wraps around the contents on two sides and the bottom and can be held with one hand. Can you see that taco?

Now read that paragraph back and replace the word “taco” with “hot dog.” It still makes sense. You can still see a hot dog.

The fact that a hot dog is more like a taco — yes, I said fact, I will not be hearing otherwise — is also backed by the Cube Rule. 

According to the Cube Rule, there are eight categories of food and each is defined by the placement of the starch-based food product. A sandwich, for example, has two pieces of a starchy food, one on top and one on bottom. If something doesn’t have a starchy food to hold it in place, it’s a salad, and if the starchy food helps to make up the content of the food, then what you have are nachos.

A taco is something that has the starchy food on two sides and the bottom, making a convenient, easy to carry “U” shape. What other food item does that apply to? Yes, a hot dog. The contents don’t matter, only where the starch-based food product is. 

Everyone’s been fighting for so long over whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Friendships have ended and families have been torn apart — maybe — and this whole time, the answer was right in front of us. 

A hot dog isn’t just more like a taco than a sandwich. A hot dog is a taco. I will not be taking any questions.