No, this isn’t about yesterday’s posting. Something totally different today.

I don’t know how many of you watch Watchdog. They have some good bits but they also have some bad bits. The good bits are when they unmask the real cowboys and criminals.

However they do have some stinkers where they make a huge story out of nothing. Now I’m usually juts a sad lad but when a grumpy old man complains about real life not matching up with the perfect world in advertising then I can turn into a grumpy but sad lad.

On last night’s show they had Rick Wakeman hosting a spot about fast food not matching up with the pictures used to advertise the fast food. Examples were shown of McDonald’s burgers looking massive with perfect buns and colourful salad and firm meat in advertising pictures. These were then compared with real life examples bought from the the restaurants. The real life ones looked sad with droopy buns, limp salad and slimy meat.

They also compared microwave meals with the pictures on the packets. Again the real life examples didn’t look like the advertising pictures.

The ones used in the picture were specially prepared by expensive experts who worked for hours to get the perfect example ready for the photographers who used their deep knowledge of photography to arrange the perfect lighting set up. The ones bought by the general public were specially prepared by staff trained for a day or two, who don’t have huge amount of loyalty to their employer, who are rushed off their feet and don’t have their heart set on producing the perfect burger.

Now, am I just just not naïve enough to think that real life food will ever look like the marketing. Does advertising need regulating to stop people being fooled into thinking that they will buy perfect food. Are people actually being fooled and is Watchdog making it look like the general public are stupid enough to be deceived by the pictures and therefore they need some big auntie to look after them and tell them what’s what.

Even with home made burgers I bet you wouldn’t be able to make them as nicely as the ones in the pictures in this Daily Mail article.

Livewire
April 16, 2011 at 06:36

When I was a lad (yawn readers, but keep reading) there was a shop that specialised in American imports of comics etc. They also did all the specialist mags like Popular Science etc. The ads at the back had things like “Genuine ruby rod, build your own laser, only 10 dollars!”. I don’t think the Yanks have ever had advertising regulations so it’s buyer beware (caveat emptor for the literati). Despite all the regulations here I still assume that they are written by naive idiots who couldn’t regulate their own bladder control. Healthy cynicism? Not a bad idea when looking at political parties of all kinds…

JuliaM
April 16, 2011 at 06:57

“On last night’s show they had Rick Wakeman hosting a spot about fast food not matching up with the pictures used to advertise the fast food.”

I bet he didn’t do it quite like Michael Douglas…

“Yes, sir! Sheila, get his order!”

Zaphod
April 16, 2011 at 08:47

Owen Morgan
April 18, 2011 at 20:26

The Michael Douglas thing was exactly what I thought of when I read this piece. So “Watchdog” chooses its topics according to which DVD the editor watched last night, presumably.

KenS
April 16, 2011 at 09:07

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Bertie Bassett
April 16, 2011 at 09:17

I enjoyed Falling Down when I first saw it but not so much now. “They are ripping me, and, therefore, the rest of us off, so something must be done”.

Trouble is, the self appointed righteous get stuck in. Rick is not short of a few bob and knows how to pull strings with the media to have his say. If he or any of us, want eight ounce burgers made of prime beef presented in hand made artisan bread rolls, we can eschew Mc-burgers and eat elsewhere. Or ring out to a decent restaurant and pay for bespoke food to be delivered. Or he can enjoy what amonts to
mass produced food that he knows will taste the same and almost certainly not give him ‘ digestive issues’ no matter where in the world he eats it, by an franchise that there is a reasonable chance one of his younger staff or associates will have worked for.

We all know that the pictures of the food are not quite what we will get. Even if totally native, the chains can only pull the stunt once, since, after your first disappointment, you have fuller knowledge. If you go back for more, and millions do, daily, do so out of choice.

The fallacy in Falling Down is that the breakfast he wanted was there on the shelf! Sheila should have sold it. But since D-Fens, and “the customer is always right” there has been, on one side, people who make and want to expand a livelihood on the premise that most people are, and always will be, stupid, and need to have their minds made up for them, and on the other, those people on reality shows who that if you are late for check in at an airport, you need only to shout and rage to get what you want.

Gildas theMonk
April 16, 2011 at 09:34

I am a bit of a food fascist at the moment. I hate processed food. I believe a great number of the ills of society are attributable to it. How many kids go to school full of fizzy e-numbers and crisps and then get “hyper” and complain about “Attention Disorder?” I can’t remember seeing many “obese” people when I was growing up in the 70′s. Now I regularly see obese children as well as adults. For many people “cooking” is putting something in a packet in the microwave. Not only is it bad for you, it’s depressing and soulless. One of the happiest moments of my life was spending a Sunday afternoon cooking for twenty adults or more and children in a big country house. The kids were playing by the pool, the adults sunbathing and chatting, I had a whole range of Agas to myself, a super play on radio 4 and a glass or two of wine. A vast meal of legs of lamb, roasties and veg was prepared to a strict timetable. At the due time, enter the horde of hungry adults and scampering children who devoured my efforts with the efficiency of mighty locusts, before the children rushed off again, and the adults sat back sated. The joy of life, the joy of cooking.
G the M

electro-kevin
April 16, 2011 at 10:42

But … there’s nothing quite like a McDonald’s – you simply have to agree.

A Big Mac and fries with and an apple pie washed down with an iced Coke is the first thing any celebrity (or I) would want on release from the jungle after a two week diet of beans.

Multiple Agas are hugely wasteful and energy inefficient btw.

Paaarp !

Engineer
April 16, 2011 at 12:02

I’m with Gildas on this one. A properly prepared and cooked meal, using good basic ingredients knocks almost every ‘fast-food’ on the planet way out of sight. There’s nothing to touch a proper stew of good meat from a local butcher, slowly simmered in a low oven in a rich stock or in good ale, served up with seasonal vegetables lightly steamed, and chased down by lashings of tea and leisurely contemplation. Lancashire hot-pot, anyone? I’d far sooner have a bowl of porridge and a sprinkle of brown sugar than any amount of e-number laden ‘breakfast cereals’. (Well, I might make an exception for a good fry-up with proper dry-cured bacon, decent black pudding and plenty of fried bread.)

As for the advertising, I just ignore the lot. Let ‘em get on with it. If others want to eat reconstituted e-numbers and cardboard buns, that’s their choice, but life is short and there are only so many meals left. Might as well enjoy them!

Livewire
April 16, 2011 at 12:15

Never contradict a food fascist. They burn Reich-stag and proper gander in a Horst Vessel after cutting it with long knives, then drop foodlebugs on it.

electro-kevin
April 17, 2011 at 13:39

I also crave Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodles.

electro-kevin
April 17, 2011 at 13:41

Can you imagine the Calcatta branch of McDonald’s ?

“Would you like flies with that, Mensaab ?”

davidb
April 16, 2011 at 09:46

Haven’t been to Dublin in a few years, but they have a place called Eddie Rockets where the burgers look like a meaty equivalent of Scarlett Johansson. And they taste wonderful too.

Lorenzo
April 16, 2011 at 10:37

I’ll take a Scarlett Johansson please!

munch munch munch

2Mac
April 16, 2011 at 11:08

Much food advertising on billboards, product packaging, recipe books and within supermarkets have been specially prepared with paints and fake props that look like idealised versions of the foods.

I was quite shocked when this was explained to me by someone who works in product development for a large supermarket chain.

Ex-Liverpool Docker
April 16, 2011 at 11:52

Don’t you just ‘hate’ those food pictures pinned up outside restaurants as if they’re so enticing you won’t be able to refuse? In most cases I bet the pictures would taste better than the food!

When it comes to McDonald’s……they’re not a patch on Quick, c’est magnifique….

Dick Puddlecote
April 16, 2011 at 15:58

Agreed about Quick

lenko
April 16, 2011 at 12:46

Even fifty years ago, they were using mashed potato to masquerade as ice cream. It just looked better on camera.

Joe Public
April 16, 2011 at 17:25

And didn’t melt under the lights.

Cernunnos
April 16, 2011 at 15:42

I was there at Gildas’ feast on that halcyon day in the dim and distant past. While the eating of the meal might not have been such an intensely spiritual experience to us as the preparation of it obviously was to Gildas (note to G – we know where those 3 bottles of Merlot went), it was bloody good eating! A fond ‘BUUUUURP!’ in memoriam. Not so, disastrously, the next night when Gildas, like Jeffrey, was “unwell” and some clown prepared some “party food”. It was extremely nasty. In fact, as I recall…. Bleuuuuuch ‘scuse me, must find a privy….

Michael
April 16, 2011 at 18:22

I gave up on Watchdog in the Lynn Faulds Wood era when she complained that it was possible for toddlers to crawl into tumble dryers. Her cure? Make the door much smaller, leaving aside the fact that it then became impossible to put your washing into the thing to dry it!
Food “make-up”? non-story as this has been going on for years but a “celeb” has raised the issue so there it is for those with an attention span less than a stunned Telly Tubbie.

Ian R Thorpe
April 16, 2011 at 19:20

I was going to recall that Michael Douglas film but someone beat me to it.

The worsst offenders for this were not the current crop of American fat food ‘restaurants’ but our own, fortunately now defunct, Wimpy Bars, (go on, wallow in nostalgia) Spud-u-like (we didn’t which is why they went out of business) and a well known operator of mortorway services that I’m not being coy about not naming, I can’t remember which it was but they ran a lot of services.

The food bore no resemblence to the pictures whichy showed genberous portions of sumptuous, tasty looking fry ups, fish and chips, grills and roasts.