Thursday, April 19, 2007

Did you know fast food is doctored?

In the ongoing category of things you've thought about but never thought of putting online, another entry. Someone's put up a Web site that publishes advertising photos of fast food -- the Platonic form of, say, the Big Mac, in a manner of speaking -- side by side with Le Big Mac itself, or any similar product. The results aren't so pretty.

Maybe these guys have also seen a disturbing question in burgernomics -- to wit, how can McD's offer a cheeseburger for 99 cents and a double cheeseburger for $1?

As for the comparison of fast-food photos, the site aims for a certain scientific rigor: they don't alter the real products in any way, just take 'em home and put 'em in front of a digital camera. "This," the publishers say, "is an ongoing Pulitzer-caliber project."

A commenter on boing boing, which pointed out the link, chips in with this:

I worked (briefly) in the photogoraphy studio of one of the biggest ad agencies in NYC. They paid a professional "food stylist" around $2000 a day to make the food look like that. Every golden sesame seed or drop of crystaline dew was hand placed. That maoynaise isn't mayo, it's hair gel and that chicken looks so good because aparently everything looks yummier when it's been sprayed with laquer. A lot of that "food" isn't food at all and the stuff that is food has been treated with more chemicals and "tricks of the trade" than most super models.

Good to know. Or is it?

Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:22 PM

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