Rick Bayless and Burger King - Part 2

[tommy]

Nothing about that sandwich says "diet" to me.

on what do you base that comment? the "numbers" suggest diet to me.

[Jason Perlow]

Nothing about that sandwich says "diet" to me.

on what do you base that comment? the "numbers" suggest diet to me.

I'm not going by the numbers. If they wanted to state "it only has 350 calories" and "Its a great low fat choice for people on the go" they would have done so in the commercial and positioned it in all its literature at the stores as a low-fat sandwich. I don't recall hearing anything like that in the Bayless, Ray or Shaq commercials. Not everyone is going to be checking the BK web site for this kind of information. Now it could be possible that I'm completely tuned out to this sort of thing, and someone in that commercial said "ONLY 5 GRAMS OF FAT! COME AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT TODAY!" but I don't remember them doing this.

By the way, the sucker still has 1200mg of sodium.

Edited November 3, 2003 by Jason Perlow (log)

[tommy]

Nothing about that sandwich says "diet" to me.

on what do you base that comment? the "numbers" suggest diet to me.

I'm not going by the numbers. If they wanted to state "it only has 350 calories" and "Its a great low fat choice for people on the go" they would have done so in the commercial and positioned it in all its literature at the stores as a low-fat sandwich. I don't recall hearing anything like that in the Bayless, Ray or Shaq commercials. Not everyone is going to be checking the BK web site for this kind of information.

By the way, the sucker still has 1200mg of sodium.

well then what are you going by? are you saying that nothing about the marketing says diet to you? if that's the case, i suppose that's fair.

sodium and dieting have little to do with each other. at least, that's a popular opinion shared by professionals and me, and discussed way back when on this thread.

[Jason Perlow]

well then what are you going by?  are you saying that nothing about the marketing says diet to you?  if that's the case, i suppose that's fair.

Yes I'm going strictly by the marketing. In what other fashion can Burger King communicate to its customers? With fast food the marketing is everything.

My guess is that in some marketing meeting some pin striped twit said "hey, lets get a celebrity chef to endorse this peice of shit, because nobody in their right mind will beleive any of these low-fat claims anyway."

As to sodium and dieting -- lets remember who they are marketing this product to. Diet doctors are not going to be eating this sandwich. Average people with a basic or less than basic understanding of nutrition will be eating it. Whether or not consumption of high amounts of sodium doesnt correlate with gaining weight, its sure as hell unhealthy and most people associate it as such.

[tommy]

Yes I'm going strictly by the marketing. In what other fashion can Burger King communicate to its customers? With fast food the marketing is everything.

well jason, you said "nothing about that sandwich says diet to me." you can understand that i might take this as your (educated) opinion of the actual sandwich, rather than the marketing campaign (which may or may not have completed its life-cycle yet).

and the sodium still doesn't matter.

[Jason Perlow]

What I do find interesting is that on the BK web site, they have a "Webmercial" for the sandwich that starts off by telling you it only has 5 grams of fat and ends by telling you it has 5 grams of fat.

Now why would they bother creating this commercial for the web and not position the sandwich in the popular media as low fat?

I'm guessing because they did some research that the web-savvy people are more likely to go to the BK web site to research this stuff, versus the average joe who's driving to work and listening to the radio and comes home, slouches down on his ez-boy and pops open a couple of buds to watch Monday Night Footaball.

[tommy]

To all of you complaining about the taste....that is NOT what is important.

[Jinmyo]

To all of you complaining about the taste....that is NOT what is important.

IrishCream, please let us know what your husband thinks of the sandwich after he has tried it.

[klc14]

quoting hillbill Posted: Oct 29 2003, 01:12 PM

Alls I can say is that, as the average schmo that I am, if I didn't know who this guy was and about all the controversy from reading about it here, when I saw the commercials I'd probably think, "who is this goofy yutz and why is he promoting Burger King" just as I do about other goofy yutzes unknown to me promoting various products.

Hear, hear! I saw the BBQ one last night and was thinking mostly, gee, he's awfully funny looking. Like, Revenge of the Nerds at 40 or something. Then I realized, "It's the infamous..."

But I don't eat at BK these days, my system does not tolerate fast food . Happens when you get used to good food. So I'm steering clear on health grounds.

When Pam cooking spray came out in the 70's, its celebrity endorser was one Carmelita Pope. Every time I saw it, I would think, who's Carmelita Pope. My parents later said she was a movie starlet in the 40s or 50s. But she could say her name and speak the lines like she was somebody you should pay attention to.

...and of course Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed a brand of margarine in the 50s, I think it was called "Lucky," because she wanted to make poor people aware of and willing to use a cheap substitute for butter (knowledge of transfatty acids being WAY in the future). She apparently really tried the stuff too. They used to run the ad in a display at the National Archives which is where I saw it.

[bourdain]

Just read Rick "BK" Bayless's response.

It strikes me as a pretty weak-ass justification for a fait-accompli--remarkable only for its stunningly egocentric world view and lame logic.

My take on Burger King--and its indistinguishable brethren over at Ronald's is this:

They suck. They're bad for America. They're bad for the world. They're ultimately about dumbing down the whole concept of the meal, standardization and consistency over quality, narcotizing and brand-imprinting children, removing the whole concept of skilled labor from food preparation and selling Super-Sized soft drinks to fat kids. They can sell all the damn salads and hi-concept "healthy" sandwiches they want--they know full well that they'll get 'em on the other end-meaning a mile-high vat of soda (the moneymaker). In Bayless's full throated defense of a kinder, gentler, more sensitive Burger King, he ignores the the fact that their very structures are a blight--that no one--particularly Bayless I'd guess--would want to live next to one. They make neighborhoods UGLY and same-looking. But then, apparently, BK is "okay" for lower income people--for people who can't afford to eat at his places... As he points out, 70 percent of the population already eat there--and at similar operations--once a week--so fuck 'em. Why fight 'em when you can join 'em.?

Bullshit, I say.

You fight the enemy. You attack them. You use your bully pulpit--and whatever reputation you have to coerce, seduce, or shame people into changing their chosen eatery. Fast food--and cheap food--as Bayless should know better than anyone--can be GOOD food. He's been making a fortune off it for years. Nothing is faster, cheaper and better than a freshly made taco, a bowl of posole, a tamale--made by an independent operator. While freshly made tortillas and good quality salsa verde may be expensive exotica to Chicago's dining public, they're everyday fare to millions of poor Mexicans. Why not promote quickly served, cheap, good, freshly made Mexican food (or pho, or kebab or any of the other of the world's great street foods)--and support those who'd care to try establishing such operations, rather than helping the Evil Empire to endure. Free commercial appearances promoting say--relaxed immigration laws--and low-interest loans for start up indie one chef/one dish outlets, tax credits for same. The Newman Salads and the Bayless Strategy are the defensive moves of an industry who, for the first time, are beginning to show weakness. Mickey D was having real problems which it shrewdly responded to (damn!). BK is clearly looking worriedly into the future and doing the same. With distant rumbles of litigation against them, shrinking market share, increasing ill will abroad (as emblems of American Evil), these crap merchants were actually, for one glorious moment, looking vulnerable. Time, one would think, for all right thinking people like Bayless to pile on, to vilify, to insult, to mock, to rejoice. Instead, Bayless, comfortable in his belief that stupid people will eat at these places no matter what he does, decides to give them a helping hand--add a little legitimacy and credibility to an industry that should have exactly none.

It is an extraordinarily cynical position. And giving small farmers the loot so you can buy more organic micro-greens for restaurants that BK customers will doubtfully ever be able to afford mitigates not at all.

I'm not saying, by the way, that the Good Guys will ever WIN this war. I'm just saying that no self respecting chef or citizen of the world should stop TRYING. Bayless has thrown in the towel--and it's smeared with bogus BBQ sauce.

[jbraynolds]

Taste isn't important? Then why not just air pop a pound of popcorn and eat it without any seasoning? That will fill anyone up with no consequences.

[Jinmyo]

Bourdain, you know I hate to read suck-ups to you but that was great.

[hillbill]

If they wanted to state "it only has 350 calories" and "Its a great low fat choice for people on the go" they would have done so in the commercial and positioned it in all its literature at the stores as a low-fat sandwich. I don't recall hearing anything like that in the Bayless, Ray or Shaq commercials. Not everyone is going to be checking the BK web site for this kind of information. Now it could be possible that I'm completely tuned out to this sort of thing, and someone in that commercial said "ONLY 5 GRAMS OF FAT! COME AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT TODAY!" but I don't remember them doing this.

By the way, the sucker still has 1200mg of sodium.

I'm almost certain that they make a point of expressing "only X grams of fat" in the Bayless commercials. I think the voiceover says it, I'm pretty sure it is stated in words, and I think that perhaps even Bayless mentions it.

I thought that they were positioning it to compete with the Subway commercials (and steal some of the public recogntion) that have the guy who lost all that weight eating only Subway sandwiches and that tout the Subway low-fat sandwiches with "only X grams of fat" and I thought that Burger King was probably wanting to evoke a similar low-fat mystique without being extremely blatant about it. My understanding is that most mass-market foods that were promoted primarily on the basis of their low-fat attributes have done very poorly. Taco Bell, for example, did really badly with their "Border Light" line that they promoted heavily in the mid-90's.

Edited November 3, 2003 by hillbill (log)

[hannnah]

I'm almost certain that they make a point of expressing "only X grams of fat" in the Bayless commercials.  I think the voiceover says it, I'm pretty sure it is stated in words, and I think that perhaps even Bayless mentions it. 

At least in the first commercial, both the voiceover and on-screen make a point of the sandwich only having 5g fat. They show the nutrition facts label with a big red circle around "5g," last shot before they cut to the corporate logo.

[bilrus]

You fight the enemy. You attack them. You use your bully pulpit--and whatever reputation you have to coerce, seduce, or shame people into changing their chosen eatery...

But is his bully pulpit really big enough to reach the people that need to be reached?

I've mentioned this several times among the previous thousand posts on this thread, but I don't understand the whole idea of BK using a chef that 99% of BK's target customers don't know from the chef at their corner cafe.

The same holds true for him trying to do the right thing. Is his celebrity among the people he is trying to reach great enough that your proposed 100% pure efforts whould make a bit of difference.

It may be cynical but I wonder if it's better to do the 100% pure thing and accomplish little or do something slightly tainted and accomplish more?

[jbraynolds]

If you're not going to make an impression on 99% of the people who don't know or care who you are, why would you want to piss off or at least look like a pimping dumbass to almost 99% of the people who *do* know who you are? Duh.

[hillbill]

If anyone wants to taste the sandwich (exclusively for the sake of research purposes, of course) there's a printable coupon for $1 off a Baguette meal on the Burger King web site. Even the coupon page touts the "only 5 grams of fat" aspect.

There's a somewhat humorous and sorta ironic dichotomy inherent in the two different "meals" that they're offering on the coupon:

Value Meal includes fries and a soft drink.

Lite Combo is low in calories and fat and includes side salad and 16.9 oz. bottled water.  This is not a low sodium food.  For complete nutritional info, visit www.burgerking.com or any restaurant.

[hillbill]

quoting hillbill Posted: Oct 29 2003, 01:12 PM 

Alls I can say is that, as the average schmo that I am, if I didn't know who this guy was and about all the controversy from reading about it here, when I saw the commercials I'd probably think, "who is this goofy yutz and why is he promoting Burger King" just as I do about other goofy yutzes unknown to me promoting various products.

When Pam cooking spray came out in the 70's, its celebrity endorser was one Carmelita Pope. Every time I saw it, I would think, who's Carmelita Pope. My parents later said she was a movie starlet in the 40s or 50s. But she could say her name and speak the lines like she was somebody you should pay attention to.

When I read this the name "Rula Lenska" immediately popped into consciousness. It's one of those inane bits of minutiae stuck in the nooks and crannies of my english muffin brain.

Rula Lenska   

Date of birth (location)

30 September 1947

St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Trivia

Famous for campy commercials that appeared in the U.S. in the 1970s and 80s.

Real Name: Rula Lenska

Category: Show Biz

Claim To Fame: "Rula Lenska did beauty commercials (can't remember what product), she came onto set in a Loretta Young-type swish, saying "I'm Rula Lenska, the famous actress from ...(Romania, Czechoslovakia?) She almost attained cult-like status, because no one had ever heard of her before the commercial. Also, got to be the brunt of a joke, when people imitated her entrance on the set and greeting....."

Will Rick Bayless be the Rula Lenska of the 2030's?

[Bux]

By the way, the sucker still has 1200mg of sodium.

I've had mineral water with those kind of numbers. Tasted salty to me, but some people love it. They even claim it helps digestion.

[jhlurie]

Bourdain, you know I hate to read suck-ups to you but that was great.

Not to mention that Tony has brought up something I'm not sure I've seen yet in this discussion. We've spoken about home cooking vs. fast food, but he's brought up "street food", and it's made me think (rare for a Bourdain rant, where at the end I'm usually too stunned to process fully). Elsewhere on eG, I've brought up this little grocery store I occasionally go to with a Taqueria in the back. The guy charges $5 for 4 soft tacos, over-filled with fresh flavorful ingredients. I see people spending the same amount of money, or often more, over at Taco Bell, and for me that definitely pushes a Bourdainesque "rant" button. Maybe they don't all have an authentic Taqueria in their area, fine. I didn't have one until recently. But there's got to be SOMETHING. Hell, there used to be a little Taco stand at a mall I once lived by that was infinitely better than Taco Bell, and the guy was still using hard corn shells and cheap chopped meat he'd cooked up in a big pot. It doesn't take much. McDonald's itself, back far enough, used to be a place like this, before it became all about eternal expansion and setting a standard menu.

Putting Bayless' dreams of a substainable organic future aside, the claims that BK is "fresh" and some of the best whatever it is around is an affront to small businesses that really ARE doing those things. And while BK as a corporation has no reason to care about this, we certain should.

[John Whiting]

You fight the enemy. You attack them. You use your bully pulpit--and whatever reputation you have to coerce, seduce, or shame people into changing their chosen eatery.

Thank you, this is eloquent stuff. Those who have the time should search out Marion Nestle's magnum opus, _Food Politics_ and _Safe Food_, UC Berkeley Press. A professor of nutrition who is also a self-confessed foodie, she has been documenting the food industry's machinations for a quarter-century. Many of the contemporary journalistic protests against the Big Sell have been lifted uncredited out of her research.

[hollywood]

Will Rick Bayless be the Rula Lenska of the 2030's?

Saving up your money for a rainy day

giving all your clothes to charity

Last night the wife said

Oh boy when you're dead

you don't take nothing with you but your soul, think

Christ you know it ain't easy

You know how hard it can be

The way things are going

They're going to crucify me

[jbraynolds]

No, you haven't had mineral water that is 1200 mg of sodium per serving.

[bpearis]

Yes I'm going strictly by the marketing. In what other fashion can Burger King communicate to its customers? With fast food the marketing is everything.

well jason, you said "nothing about that sandwich says diet to me." you can understand that i might take this as your (educated) opinion of the actual sandwich, rather than the marketing campaign (which may or may not have completed its life-cycle yet).

and the sodium still doesn't matter.

The Bayless commecial has mentions the fat content, haven't seen the other two. I've been on the fence about this whole thing but after seeing the commercial a few times, it's pretty embarrassing for Bayless if you ask me.

[Kim WB]

Also, you follow the money trail....as FG pointed out, Bayless didn't say one word about donating until AFTER the hoopla.

However, I wish Bayless had said " Yeah, I did it..do you have any idea what tuition and room and Board costs at University of XYZ? They offerrred me the gig, paid me well, so I took it...knowing I've got this chunk of change from BK will give me more freedom to run and open the kind of places I want and provide my family wioth financial security...".

Then, you could all continue berating him for selling out, but at least he'd not be a liar.