Every difference between UK and US Subway including portion sizes, calories, and exclusive items

• We tried everything on the UK and US Subway menus to find out the big differences between the two.
• While the two sandwich chains look similar on the surface there were huge differences between the sizes, calories, and ingredients.

Harry Kersh: From calorie count to portion sizes, we wanted to find out all the differences between Subway in the UK and the US. This is "Food Wars." At Subway in the UK, you can get sandwiches in four different sizes. Firstly, we have toasted bites, a 6-inch sub, a foot-long sub, and then you can get a platter.

Joe Avella: And in the US, we have three sizes. The 6-inch. The foot-long. There you go. For you and your team, [grunts] the big boy. Party platter. The old Subway platypus.

Harry: Now, in the UK, a platter looks like this. What they do is they make four foot-long sandwiches, then they cut those into fours. So you're left with 16 pieces, each of which is 3 inches.

Joe: And for the party platter here, they take five sandwiches, cutting them into three pieces, giving you 15 sandwiches total. In addition, in the US you can also get yourself a 3-foot-long party sub. [laughs] Look at this thing! This is ridiculous. 3 feet, so that is, what that's in... what do you got in the UK? That's...17 meters? I have no idea. Yeah!

Harry: Now, in the UK, drinks at Subway come in two sizes. We have a regular, which is 400 milliliters.

Joe: 20-ounce Sprite. What up? Harry: And we have a large. Joe: 30-ounce. Boom. And if you're really thirsty, [laughs] 40 ounces of soda. 40 ounces is a little over three cans of soda. That is way too much soda. It is way too, that's just too much.

Harry: If you're a fan of Subway's cookies, in the UK those come in three sizes. One cookie. Three cookies. Or 12 cookies.

Joe: In the US Subway, you can get a single cookie, a dozen cookies, right like that, or the [laughs] hang on, keep rolling, the 36-cookie platter! Booyah! [laughs] I'm like in Vegas, baby! All in.

Harry: We wanna make sure that you're getting the same amount of filling as you do in the US here in the UK. So, what we've got here is a foot-long Italian BMT on hearty Italian with lettuce and olives. We're gonna weigh it to see if the quantities are the same.

Joe: All right, BMT. Stay. Harry: So, the weights are pretty similar. What we're gonna do is take them apart and see how it all adds up. So, when it comes to the amount of filling that you get in your subs, it looks like the UK and the US are actually pretty identical. So, what about calories? We found out that the most popular sub at Subway is actually the turkey breast sub. So if you were to walk into a UK Subway and order a regular turkey breast sub and then make it a meal by including a regular drink and a cookie, you'd be looking at 621 calories.

Joe: That same order in the US is 690 calories. Now, the sub itself is actually less calories. It's only 250. But the drink, the medium Coke, is around 240, and the cookie is 200 calories. But wait! According to the internet, in the US the default actually comes with two cookies, which brings it to a grand total of 890 calories.

Harry: What about the calories in another sub? Well, in the UK, 6 inches of meatball marinara comes in at 492 calories.

Joe: In the US, 6-inch meatball is only 430 calories. Yo.

Harry: Now, because we're not sure why our meatball sub is more calorific, we're actually gonna do another test. We're gonna bring back our friend the scales. And we're gonna weigh a meatball. Just... clean that bit. Delicious. Boom.

Joe: And now I will also weigh one meatball. Gonna find a good one. Don't want the sauce to throw off these measurements. Get in real close. Get in real close over there. Ready? You close? Close? Here we go. Drumroll. And...uh! How much is it? No change? Our scale is not very accurate. Sorry. Let's get that weight up on the screen!

Harry: Unfortunately, Subway in the UK doesn't disclose the full ingredients list. However, there are some things we can glean from the website. In the UK, the ham, turkey breast, and steak that you'll find in your sandwiches are actually "formed."

Joe: The turkey bologna and the turkey salami are also made by a process known as mechanically separated turkey. [typing] "Mechanically separated turkey." What do we got here?

Harry: From the allergens list in the UK, we can also see that our meatballs contain milk, although it's not clear if the meatballs contain the milk or if it just comes with cheese by default.

Joe: We do have the ingredients list of the meatball sandwich at Subway, and I'll read that to you right now. Oh, boy. Beef, water, breadcrumbs, and then we have the kind of square brackets, [toasted wheat crumbs, and now we have the curved brackets, (enriched wheat flour, now we have the fancy brackets, {wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid}, close fancy brackets, sugar, salt, soybean oil, yeast)], and then close the other two brackets. [clears throat] Textured soy protein concentrate, seasoning, open brackets again, (dehydrated onion and garlic, salt, spices, dehydrated parsley, soybean oil), close brackets, soy protein concentrate, and Romano cheese. Can you scroll up, please? Keep going. Keep going. The Romano cheese, which is made from pasteurized "part-skin" cow's milk. [sighs] I'm assuming it's "skim" cow's milk. But to be honest, if I told you there was cow skin in this food, would you be surprised? Part-skim cow's milk, cheese cultures, salts, and enzymes. "Which enzymes?" you ask. They're not at liberty to say, but rest assured there are enzymes. Now, on the bright side, the dough is pretty much normal. For the classic Italian bread, the ingredients are enriched flour, which is wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, nitrate? Yeah. OK. Riboflavin, folic acid, water, yeast, sugar, soybean oil, salt, wheat gluten, cultured wheat flour, malted barley flour, sunflower lechithin. Lecithin. Leckithin? Hey, did you hear that?

Phone: Lecithin.

Joe: Lecithin! Sunflower lecithin, dough conditioner, which also has enzymes. Which ones, you don't know. And ascorbic acid. [sighs] All that stuff.

Harry: While we might not have an ingredients list for our bread, we do know that it's likely to not be perfect. For example, an Irish court recently declared that Subway cannot call its loaves "bread" due to the high sugar content. Subway uses more than 10% sugar in their flour. Here's everything you can only find on the menu at a UK Subway. So, let's start with the subs. Now, there are a few kind of default subs that you can only find in the UK. So then once you've chosen your sub and your bread, we've also got a few other customization options that are exclusive to the UK. For example, in this sub we've combined a bunch of them. So, I've gone for chicken tikka. It has hash browns. It has sweet corn. It has vegan garlic aioli. It has HP brown sauce, and it has whole-grain mustard. So, brown sauce is kind of a traditional British condiment. The biggest brand manufacturer of it is a brand called HP, which stands for Houses of Parliament, to maybe give a nod --

Joe: Harry, are you really Brit-splaining to me HP sauce? I love HP sauce. I've been having HP sauce, I've had a bottle of HP sauce in my fridge for at least the past 20 years.

Harry: Over here, we have the meatless meatball marinara sub with some vegan "mozzarella" cheese as well. And it's on chili paprika bread. Joe: Our exclusive customizations in the US include avocado, pepper jack cheese, provolone, Swiss cheese, and banana peppers. And if you like your sauce, you can make your sauce -- [laughs] If you like a saucy sub, you can have the sauciest Subway saucy sub here in the United Sauce, because we have all these sauces, including a balsamic sub sauce, a creamy sriracha, a deli brown mustard, yellow mustard, you guys don't have yellow mustard? That can't be right. Sorry if you don't have yellow mustard. I thought that was everywhere. Oil. Oil? You guys don't have oil either? OK. Subway herb and garlic oil, ranch, red wine vinaigrette, and a special "sub" spice.

Harry: So, moving the subs to one side for a second, we also have some side dishes which are exclusive to the UK. Let's start with this, which kind of surprised me when I saw it on the menu, but you can actually just get a cup of meatballs from Subway. Next we have the garlic cheesy bread, which I think is just half of their hearty Italian 6-inch with some garlic butter on it, and then they kind of sprinkle some cheese on top and throw it in the toaster oven. The last side dish is nachos. They actually just get some Doritos, throw them into a box, give you some cheese, some jalapeños.

Joe: That is an insult to nachos. Those are the kind of nachos you make in your 20s when you're drunk at 2 in the morning. Chips, cheese, microwave it, throw on some salsa. That is the most depressing plate of nachos I've ever seen. That is the worst thing associated, excuse me, that is the second-worst thing associated with the Subway franchise. The only exclusive side that you can get at a Subway in the US is the applesauce pouch, which we don't have. Unfortunately, the two Subways we went to did not have them available. Can we get a graphic of the applesauce pouch on the screen somewhere near my head? Yeah, it looks like that.

Harry: Now, we wanted to get as many UK exclusives into one sub as possible. So this is my creation. I'll be clear, this is not my usual order. You get the tang of the brown sauce with the little popping sweetness of the sweet corn. And then I just got, like, a whole hash brown in there as well. Do not order the UK Only sub.

Joe: And of course, we put together a sub with all the USA-only ingredients, which is a foot-long barbecue rib sandwich with the jalapeño cheddar bread and avocado and pepper jack cheese and provolone cheese and Swiss cheese and banana peppers. Ugh, the US with banana peppers. I don't know what our thing is with banana peppers. I'm not into banana peppers. I don't know why they're so popular here. That's actually pretty good. I actually like that. The jalapeño bread. Wow! Oh, man, the sriracha sauce. Ooh, and the avocado. Whoa, it's got some heat to it, too. I'm totally surprised. I kind of like that. Yeah!