Americans love their grilled cheese, at least according to a poll of more than 1,200 people by the public opinion and data company YouGov. But what are the most despised sandwiches?
Data viz guru Nathan Yau decided to use the YouGov poll to map out people’s preferences, from least liked to most liked. The result? People are really not into cheese and tomato sandwiches, and it’s no wonder. Is that even a real sandwich?
He then visualized the data for each sandwich in small boxes, with a pink line indicating the percentage of men who disliked it, and a green line indicating the number of women who disliked it. The color of the area between the two lines indicates which gender dislikes that sandwich more. Then, he stacked each box on top of each other, similar to how you might stack a sandwich (clever!).
Other low-ranking sandwiches for both genders include the crab cake (maybe because crab cakes don’t belong in a sandwich) and the lobster roll. Sandwiches like turkey, BLTs, and grilled chicken were gender-neutral crowd-pleasers.
As for gender differences: Women tended to enjoy Cuban, pastrami, Reuben, and meatball sandwiches far less than men, which Yau postulates is because these sandwiches are so meat-heavy.
The survey also showed regional differences that Yau didn’t depict, like the fact that people from the South like grilled cheeses far more than the average, and people in the Northeast were much more into the lobster roll—probably because you can actually get decent lobster there.
You can see the full survey data here.