Food Advertising Versus Reality

So sad. The Guardian UK has a wonderful gallery of food that looks different in reality than in advertising. This, to no one, should come as a shocker, but it's still kind of sad, considering how tantalizing the food look on television or in print. In the gallery, you'll see examples from Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald's, and Arby's, among others.

That being said, I've never gotten home with Taco Bell nachos and exclaimed, "These don't look like they do on TV! I want my 1.27 back!" I believe it's called selling the sizzle and not the steak, and fast food companies are quite possibly the most adept of any companies at it. Looking back, I can't count how many sorry excuses for food I've shoveled down my throat without really tasting and not thought twice about the difference in advertising and reality.

And perhaps the food companies are vilified a little too often. One can argue whether or not they inject their food with nicotine (or whatever passes for addictive these days), but they only make the food available, cheap, and easily accessible for the masses. Plus, it provides all the things we, as humans, crave biologically: salts, fats, and sugars. See, to go on a small tangent, we have not evolved to the point that our bodies think of these substances as less than rare, so we are sort of programmed to gobble them up. Talking about all this food has indeed made me hungry...

KFC's Gamble of a Sandwich

I'm a southern guy. I get it. Bad food is just sort of a way of life. I've had just about every deep fried concoction on the planet, and it all seems perfectly normal to me. Chicken fried steak. Chicken fried chicken. If you can cover it in flour and drop it into scalding oil, chances are I've had it.

But I'm not so sure about the Frankensteinian monster KFC has cooked up. It's the ultimate in decadence, has been the butt of every hack comedian's jokes about America's weight, and we all had to know it would come, eventually.

I present: The Double Down Sandwich, from KFC. According to New York Daily News:

KFC’s newest “sandwich” is a heart-stopping creation that seems literally to die for: it layers two kinds of cheese with bacon and oozes “Colonel’s sauce.” The twist? Instead of bread, two deep-fried chicken breasts round out the calorific concoction.

I'm not saying it looks terrible - I'll hold my opinion on that - but I will say that it looks like a direct challenge to the nation's current healthcare industry. It's currently being test marketed in Providence, RI and Omaha, NE and, if successful, will hit national markets sometime soon.

I Always Thought the Food Was a Little Salty...

This video may be pulled from the internets by the time you get to it, but trust me, the story is worth disseminating. You know how people always joke about fast food employees, how they "do things" to the food of unruly customers? Not true. They do it to ALL food.



Two obviously well-educated Domino's Pizza employees videotaped themselves tainting food while preparing it for delivery and then posted the video to YouTube. Of course, the defense is that this is an isolated incident. I'm sure this kind of thing doesn't happen anywhere else, since we have no proof.

Interesting Postscript to that:

I just read on Consumerist that some people watching the video identified the EXACT Domino's franchise by using contextual video evidence and then alerted the store's manager. The Exec of Communications, Tim McIntyre, was also extremely communicative with the whistle-blowing parties, and below is a copy of the e-mail that was sent by "Kristy Kristy" to explain the "practical joke":

I am sorry about all of this! It was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from the videos that were uploaded! No food was ever sent out to any customer. We would never put something like that on you tube if it were real!! It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!! Michael never would do that to any customer, EVER!! I AM SOO SORRY! You see all the time of the pranks that people upload and the pranks need to seem real in order to get a laugh out of people but this prank was very very immature and I am sorry for the embarrasment that I have caused your company!

And, in addition, the two people featured in that fast food snuff film have been fired. Internet Justice, Unite!