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Comment by ryanwhitney | Hacker News Reader

It's a great marketing video for McDonalds, but sidesteps the actual question almost entirely.

They respond to "why do your burgers look different in commercials?" by answering "here's the process of making a commercial burger."

That doesn't address the fact that a stylist cooked it on a panini grill for an hour looking the perfect brown, leading to a thicker-width burger which indeed makes their advertisements a lie.

It doesn't matter if they use the same ingredients or need to show their pickles and ketchup. They've created an entirely different product for the advertisement and will continue to sell a lesser product in place of it. The only honest answer to the original question is the obvious one: because their normal burgers look like crap.

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> The only honest answer to the original question is the obvious one: because their normal burgers look like crap.

...how is "the burger on the ad is designed to show what's in the burger, the one you eat is designed to be eaten" not an honest answer?

> That doesn't address the fact that a stylist cooked it on a panini grill for an hour looking the perfect brown, leading to a thicker-width burger which indeed makes their advertisements a lie.

The patties are usually undercooked as well for the photo shoots, so the meat doesn't shrink as much.

Interesting to know, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie to show the larger patty.

I would have to disagree. I don't think they ever make claims about the amount of space the burger takes up. They claim it's a 1/4 lb burger. How thick it is seems irrelevant as long as they started out with a 1/4 lb of meat.

> The only honest answer to the original question is the obvious one: because their normal burgers look like crap.

I don't know about you, but I buy a hamburger for its taste and satisfaction, not to stare at it.

But it attacks an implicit accusation in that question: if the food in the commercial looks so different than it does in real life, you must be using different ingredients.

Let's face it, the fact that this ad is getting a lot of talk will be a success, because very few people will watch through the whole video and many, many fewer people will actually keep the logical assertions straight in their head...but the 5-second sound byte is: "McDonald takes on critics who accuse them of food doctoring"...even if 95% of the video is boilerplate this-is-how-you-photograph-products.

I'll admit it, somewhere in my subconscious, McDonalds got an upvote, and I'll probably act on that in a future situation when I am hungry.

Just remember that their burgers make you sick and aren't satisfying and you will be happier an hour later if you are a couple of granola bars and beef jerky instead.

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