ELECTION 2016: Eating on the campaign trail - you're doing it wrong
Shock! Horror! Could something as trivial as eating a sausage sandwich the wrong way be enough to cost you an election?
Soon after pictures of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten taking a bite from his sausage sarnie from the middle hit the internet on election day morning, the comparisons to another left-leaning leader soon followed.
"Tastes like democracy," Shorten said. To the rest of us it tasted a bit off.
Twitter users were quick to make the link between Shorten's middle-ground approach to the sanga to his former British Labour counterpart Ed Miliband's eating habits.
An unfortunate and unflattering image of Miliband devouring and "making a mess of a bacon sarnie" surfaced ahead of the 2015 UK election.
And the pics haunted him like a bad case of acid reflux.
It's hard to say whether the candid photograph cost Miliband the election, but if we asked one of the UK's notorious red tops they might say, "It was The Sun wot won it."
Shorten will escape the same panning, but critiquing how a politician eats their food among the people is a mainstay of democracy.
Eating in public is a test to see if our representatives are one of us.
On his way out to Sydney's western suburbs on election day, Malcolm Turnbull stopped for a Souvlaki.
"Not quite traditional," he admitted. But then it is a kebab.
Not quite the traditional #ausvotes sausage sandwich but great to meet the team at Souvlaki on the Run in Parramatta pic.twitter.com/gf0NDL5CEc
— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) July 2, 2016
Take the time President Barack Obama visited a Chipotle restaurant in mid-2014 and reached over the sneeze guard to make his order. A big no-no, as real people know.
Add to that Donald Trump's 2011 meeting with Sarah Palin at a New York City pizzeria.
Trump, a New Yorker through and through, should probably know that pizza is a finger food.
He opted for a knife and fork, much to the chagrin of other New Yorkers.
People were so upset by the sight, Daily Show host Jon Stewart was forced to give the billionaire and the rest of the world a lesson in how to eat a slice.
