5 ms·

Burger King’s new commercial shows the time-lapse decomposition of a Whopper

22 points by hawski 7y ago

boublepop 7y ago
I’m not in marketing sure. But this just seems textbook bad. My takeaway from the add is that burger kings burgers are moldy and disgusting. They might say all pr is good pr, but not when the pr is straight up making people associate your edible product with something they would never in a million years eat.
em500 7y ago
The article already includes McDonald's response why its burger didn't decompose (it dries out quickly due to its small size). If you're skeptical, Serious Eats confirmed this in an experiment: https://aht.seriouseats.com/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html https://aht.seriouseats.com/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisitin... (A home-made burger of the same size tested under the same condition didn't decompose either. The only thing you need to do to make either the home-made or McD's burger rot is to make sure it doesn't dehydrate quickly.)
- NTARelix 7y ago
  I performed a similar experiment in high school (~2007) but stored it in a plastic bag. After a few months it smelled absolutely horrible so I wrapped it in more bags and kept it hidden in an enclosed space. I decided to open it on the final day of high school about 2.5 years later and to this day I can recall the horrible smell and the texture. It has turned into a black slime as if it had retained or even gained lots of moisture; completely unrecognizable from its original form. Might be the worst smell I can remember to this day. I always heard people say that McDonald's burgers don't decompose, but after that experiment I never believed it because I had proven that it does decompose. That miscommunication wasn't apparent to me back then, but seems more relevant than ever now. People often like to make bold claims without giving the relevant context or even without actually understanding the context. I see this all the time with news articles or videos making some claim, showing a small bit of evidence, then the information spreads quickly through social bubbles. If I decide to dig through the sources from which the article was derived, I find that there's often a very important piece of context missing. Whether that context was intentionally removed to twist a narrative or if the context was overlooked is not always clear, but it makes it hard to trust so many people and news articles today. The best remedy for me so far has been to attempt to identify gaps in the knowledge of the people and articles that I'm observing, then try to fill in those gaps. This article puts to rest my dissatisfaction with the simple claim that they don't decompose because it reveals the primary difference in testing between the conclusions formed by the 2 opposing experiments.
mbubb 7y ago
I read one of Michael Pollen's books on food a few years back and the argument is something along the lines of: "Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. Avoid 'edible food-like substances'." To my mind that is an argument against something like "impossible burger" as a regular food. A breakfast of a super-processed, vegan, organic waffle, soy egg replacement and faux bacon is not much better for you than the pancake house originals. If at all. Sometimes it is a fun social thing to get fast food or something off a grease truck. More than once a week or so its not doing you very much good. There is variety in diet - I find the whole genetic diet idea intriguing. Though right now it is rife with pseudoscience. (I did geno-palate and found it thought provoking.) Different things work for different people - but I would bet Pollen's dicta are a pretty good base to start with and they experiment from. The cynical side of me things the BK campaign is probably bs. They will figure out another way to give us cancer, heart disease and diabetes. But it is very good to get us to think about what we all are putting in our mouths. Is it really real?
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  That quote sounds silly to me. What is real food? How much can you handle and manipulate a food until its not real anymore? Can you grind it up and make homemade burgers? Can you add a little bread crumbs to help it bind? Is bread a real food?
  - thulecitizen 7y ago
    Real food is food that has a high nutritional value and is not a processed food.
    - knolax 7y ago
      So do white bread and white rice count? They're both processed and are mostly just carbs. White rice for example has to have Thiamin added, otherwise you would get Beriberi.
      - basch 7y ago
thulecitizen 7y ago
Inverting this: for many years Burger King and other fast food chains poisoned people with non-nutritious food [1][2]. Now they want a pat on the back for making nutritious food for the first time. "“Consuming these preservatives has been shown to increase our risk of colon cancer and should be limited in our diets,” she said."[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Lkyb6SU5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Lkyb6SU5U [2] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/101/6/1251/4626878 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/101/6/1251/4626878, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6146358/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6146358/, https://blog.usejournal.com/the-united-states-has-an-epidemic-of-processed-food-and-its-killing-us-bb3a9a9a0547 https://blog.usejournal.com/the-united-states-has-an-epidemi..., https://flo.health/menstrual-cycle/lifestyle/diet-and-nutrition/the-truth-about-fast-food-ingredients https://flo.health/menstrual-cycle/lifestyle/diet-and-nutrit... [3] https://globalnews.ca/news/5792891/artificial-preservatives-affect-health/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5792891/artificial-preservatives-...
- wil421 7y ago
  You could at least put the whole quote from [3]. > Are artificial preservatives bad for you? Some artificial preservatives, such as nitrites or nitrates used in processed meats, have been shown to be bad for our health, Hnatiuk said. “Consuming these preservatives has been shown to increase our risk of colon cancer and should be limited in our diets,” she said. However, others have been studied extensively and proven to be safe. “It really just depends on the specific ingredient in question,” she explained. She goes on to say: > “Under normal circumstances, if preservatives are only consumed in small quantities, they shouldn’t pose any health risk,” Lui said.
  - thulecitizen 7y ago
    Sure, keep telling yourself this if you want to keep harming yourself and your loved ones. If you really believe the food industry cares about US citizens instead of profits, I'd recommend avoiding any of the great critical documentaries on the global food industry that have come out recently.
norswap 7y ago
It doesn't matter that people find the moldiness disgusting, as long as people talk about it. Clever. Also for all the fact that this is a stab at McDonalds, their decision to rebrand to green more than a decade ago (in Europe, and maybe elsewhere?) truly was prescient.

22 points by hawski 7y ago

I’m not in marketing sure. But this just seems textbook bad. My takeaway from the add is that burger kings burgers are moldy and disgusting. They might say all pr is good pr, but not when the pr is straight up making people associate your edible product with something they would never in a million years eat.

em500 7y ago

The article already includes McDonald's response why its burger didn't decompose (it dries out quickly due to its small size). If you're skeptical, Serious Eats confirmed this in an experiment: https://aht.seriouseats.com/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisiting-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-burger-testing-results.html https://aht.seriouseats.com/2010/11/the-burger-lab-revisitin... (A home-made burger of the same size tested under the same condition didn't decompose either. The only thing you need to do to make either the home-made or McD's burger rot is to make sure it doesn't dehydrate quickly.)

NTARelix 7y ago
I performed a similar experiment in high school (~2007) but stored it in a plastic bag. After a few months it smelled absolutely horrible so I wrapped it in more bags and kept it hidden in an enclosed space. I decided to open it on the final day of high school about 2.5 years later and to this day I can recall the horrible smell and the texture. It has turned into a black slime as if it had retained or even gained lots of moisture; completely unrecognizable from its original form. Might be the worst smell I can remember to this day. I always heard people say that McDonald's burgers don't decompose, but after that experiment I never believed it because I had proven that it does decompose. That miscommunication wasn't apparent to me back then, but seems more relevant than ever now. People often like to make bold claims without giving the relevant context or even without actually understanding the context. I see this all the time with news articles or videos making some claim, showing a small bit of evidence, then the information spreads quickly through social bubbles. If I decide to dig through the sources from which the article was derived, I find that there's often a very important piece of context missing. Whether that context was intentionally removed to twist a narrative or if the context was overlooked is not always clear, but it makes it hard to trust so many people and news articles today. The best remedy for me so far has been to attempt to identify gaps in the knowledge of the people and articles that I'm observing, then try to fill in those gaps. This article puts to rest my dissatisfaction with the simple claim that they don't decompose because it reveals the primary difference in testing between the conclusions formed by the 2 opposing experiments.

mbubb 7y ago

I read one of Michael Pollen's books on food a few years back and the argument is something along the lines of: "Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. Avoid 'edible food-like substances'." To my mind that is an argument against something like "impossible burger" as a regular food. A breakfast of a super-processed, vegan, organic waffle, soy egg replacement and faux bacon is not much better for you than the pancake house originals. If at all. Sometimes it is a fun social thing to get fast food or something off a grease truck. More than once a week or so its not doing you very much good. There is variety in diet - I find the whole genetic diet idea intriguing. Though right now it is rife with pseudoscience. (I did geno-palate and found it thought provoking.) Different things work for different people - but I would bet Pollen's dicta are a pretty good base to start with and they experiment from. The cynical side of me things the BK campaign is probably bs. They will figure out another way to give us cancer, heart disease and diabetes. But it is very good to get us to think about what we all are putting in our mouths. Is it really real?

Waterluvian 7y ago
That quote sounds silly to me. What is real food? How much can you handle and manipulate a food until its not real anymore? Can you grind it up and make homemade burgers? Can you add a little bread crumbs to help it bind? Is bread a real food?
- thulecitizen 7y ago
  Real food is food that has a high nutritional value and is not a processed food.
  - knolax 7y ago
    So do white bread and white rice count? They're both processed and are mostly just carbs. White rice for example has to have Thiamin added, otherwise you would get Beriberi.
    - basch 7y ago

thulecitizen 7y ago

Inverting this: for many years Burger King and other fast food chains poisoned people with non-nutritious food [1][2]. Now they want a pat on the back for making nutritious food for the first time. "“Consuming these preservatives has been shown to increase our risk of colon cancer and should be limited in our diets,” she said."[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Lkyb6SU5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Lkyb6SU5U [2] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/101/6/1251/4626878 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/101/6/1251/4626878, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6146358/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6146358/, https://blog.usejournal.com/the-united-states-has-an-epidemic-of-processed-food-and-its-killing-us-bb3a9a9a0547 https://blog.usejournal.com/the-united-states-has-an-epidemi..., https://flo.health/menstrual-cycle/lifestyle/diet-and-nutrition/the-truth-about-fast-food-ingredients https://flo.health/menstrual-cycle/lifestyle/diet-and-nutrit... [3] https://globalnews.ca/news/5792891/artificial-preservatives-affect-health/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5792891/artificial-preservatives-...

wil421 7y ago
You could at least put the whole quote from [3]. > Are artificial preservatives bad for you? Some artificial preservatives, such as nitrites or nitrates used in processed meats, have been shown to be bad for our health, Hnatiuk said. “Consuming these preservatives has been shown to increase our risk of colon cancer and should be limited in our diets,” she said. However, others have been studied extensively and proven to be safe. “It really just depends on the specific ingredient in question,” she explained. She goes on to say: > “Under normal circumstances, if preservatives are only consumed in small quantities, they shouldn’t pose any health risk,” Lui said.
- thulecitizen 7y ago
  Sure, keep telling yourself this if you want to keep harming yourself and your loved ones. If you really believe the food industry cares about US citizens instead of profits, I'd recommend avoiding any of the great critical documentaries on the global food industry that have come out recently.

norswap 7y ago

It doesn't matter that people find the moldiness disgusting, as long as people talk about it. Clever. Also for all the fact that this is a stab at McDonalds, their decision to rebrand to green more than a decade ago (in Europe, and maybe elsewhere?) truly was prescient.