Check out what was in Hungry-Girl this morning: Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

Something to keep in mind the next time our mouths start watering over the TV commercials!

I'm pretty sure I should NOT have started my day looking at that!

Yes, there's a reason I'm a 99% vegetarian (the exception being beef salad in a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant--yum).

Has anybody ever seen the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas? That movie is like watching fantasies because he does so many things that many of us would like to do, but don't. And one of the scenes is him in a fast food restaurant and when he gets his food, he goes off because the food doesn't look like the picture.

Anyway, you'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about, but it was very amusing.

Something funny is that since DH and I no longer watch regular tv and don't see commercials, we are fascinated when we actually see commercials somewhere. I think both of us were in a store that had a tv channel on with a commercial and both of us were watching with a weird sense of awe. I think it is weird that I could easily ignore commercials when they were a normal part of my life but now when I see them, I can't help but watch them. I do think they have more power than I believed they do.

I can understand that, but it seems to me that if you are going to make a plastic replica of your food, the replica should look like the food it is supposedly replicating! This is something that has driven me nuts about fast food (and other restaurant) advertising for years!

But sadly, it's not just fast food advertising, it seems like it is practically every ad you see these days.

And it is so hard to ignore the commercials since they are usually at a higher volume that the programme they are supposed to be part of . . . they know all the tricks to get your attention.

The Filet o' Fish and the McMuffins seem to come the closest to looking like their photos. . .

Unfortunately, I think I've tried everything in those pic's. LOL, but that was a LONG time ago. Sad, though it still looks good to me even with it all squished and drippy looking.

Well there isn't really much you can do to screw up a fish sandwich, I suppose. It's just a deep-fried fish fillet on a bun slapped with a TON of tartar sauce and sometimes cheese, LOL.

I remember ordering (eons ago, it seems) those fish sandwiches from McDonald's because, admittedly, I used to love them. And they'd slather them with so much tartar sauce that the first thing I'd do is open the sandwich up and scrape half of it off. I like a LITTLE tartar sauce on fish sandwiches, not 3 cups.

My niece used to be a photo assistant - i.e. she'd set up the stuff to be photographed. She said watching what they do to food puts you right off eating! She did this for a now-defunct dept store, not fast food places, so they actually did use "real" food, as often it was used as an accessory, not the product being sold.

Ew, that KFC Famous Bowl looks the worst. Ugh, it's so nasty.
I wouldn't like to know what it's famous for...

I was wondering the same thing. If they're so famous, how come nobody has heard of them?

Them babies are approx. 700 calories EACH.

I can think of WAY better things to spend 700 calories on.

I thought the taco salad didn't look too bad at all.

I make my own at home all the time. They don't look nearly as good as the one on the ad either!