Is the tuna in Subway’s sandwiches actually tuna? Nobody seems to know definitively.

Back in January, news broke that Subway, the world’s largest sandwich chain, was facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that the chain’s tuna sandwiches and wraps were “made from anything but tuna.” Subway said there was no merit to the claims, but according to the lawsuit, independent lab tests taken from multiple Subway locations showed that the “tuna” was actually “a mixture of various concoctions that do not constitute tuna, yet have been blended together by defendants to imitate the appearance of tuna.” The New York Times decided to go fishing in these troubled waters and do its own investigation. A reporter collected specimens from three Subway locations in Los Angeles and sent them to a lab. After a month, the lab reported that it could not detect any tuna DNA in the samples, nor could it identify the species. So does this mean Subway’s telling one big fish tale? Possibly, the lab said, or “it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification.” Seems inconclusive. When the Times asked a former Subway “sandwich artist” for her opinion, she said, “We don’t really care at all.” Perhaps there’s bigger fish to fry.

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