Lately, there have been some raised eyebrows in BK's direction, mainly because they won't agree to pay their tomato pickers an extra penny per pound of tomatoes.

The tomato pickers have to pick 125 buckets worth of the fruit in order to get $50-60 per day, and work 10-12 hours in the hot Florida sun. The new measure would only cost BK an additional $300,000 per year, out of their $11 billion yearly revenue.

Other fast food joints have already agreed to pay their workers more, but BK continues to stall. Some people are afraid that tomato growers would wind up with the money, instead of the pickers, and others are worried the new agreement will violate antitrust rules.

But the shadiness doesn't stop there. BK execs admitted that they have a relationship with Diplomatic Tactical Services, a security firm with a creepy, amorphous name, which helps BK spy on its clients.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, recently wrote an op-ed for the Times on the subject, shedding light on BK's Big Brother tactics.

I always knew there was something hiding behind that awful molded plastic King in the commercials...

Do remember those Burger King commercials with the group of moms who try to run over the Burger King? They wanted to commit vehicular homicide because their kids liked Burger King food better than their home cookin'.

Not that I can blame the moms for how they feel, but I always thought that their methods were a little extreme. Yes, I know it's just a set of commercials, but still.

Well, the Costa Rican government apparently feels the same. They banned those commercials in Costa Rica. They feel the advertising "trivialized violence" on national television.

What do you think about the Costa Rican government stepping in like that?

[Via Between Editions]

I bet Burger King hates coming in second to McDonald's all the time. In fact, I'm pretty darn sure, if only because of the new products the company is introducing.

According to a report from the Chicago Tribune, the world's second largest burger chain is going to start serving Kraft brand macaroni and cheese in test markets (which were not named in the article). And soon the corporation will roll out "BK Wrappers" to compete directly with its McDonald's counterpart.

Kraft brand macaroni and cheese is pretty well known in the supermarkets, but the company has a whole division for making the cheesy pasta dish for restaurants. Kraft has said it will make a macaroni and cheese just for Burger King.

Burger King spokespeople have said that while not completely aimed at children, they were a major consideration. Now parents can have one more reason their kids will love the King.

You've probably seen those Burger King commercials where hidden cameras capture the reactions of customers who are told that they've discontinued the Whopper. Some folks get mildly irritated while a few people go ballistic. They're probably lucky someone didn't go over the edge and injure someone because of it. My favorite is the woman in the car who tells the person taking drive-thru orders that she wants to talk to the manager. As if he would have any say in what corporate decides will be discontinued.

But the ads have worked. The sales of Whoppers increased by a double digit percentage. It's not the only hoax BK pulled on customers. Another day the Burger King locations (in Las Vegas) said they didn't have Whoppers but gave the customers McDonald's and Wendy's burgers instead.

Customers didn't like that, but I wonder how many customers actually didn't get upset?

NYC's Board of Health attempted last year to pass a measure that forced fast food joints to post calorie counts on their menu boards, right where people could see them (and, I guess, be horrified by them and run screaming from the restaurant. Or...something. Not quite sure what the city's goal was).

At any rate, a judge struck down the measure, so now they're back to where they started. But they're not giving up on trying to hoard their mighty caloric knowledge on the citizens of New York! By golly, they will succeed in getting people to acknowledge the 600 calories in that Premium Crispy Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich they're eating! And then the Board of Health officials will sleep soundly at night, feeling virtuous that they have single-handedly handled the "obesity epidemic." Right?

For the record, Burger King and McDonald's already make this information available (it took me half a minute to find how many calories were in that Chicken McWhatever listed above), they just don't advertise it like the marquee outside of Radio City. Currently, if the city's restaurants want to display their food's nutritional info, they are more than welcome to.

And I mean, really, how many people nowadays don't know that fast food is bad for them? I highly doubt that prominently displaying caloric information will make people who have already walked through a eatery's doors gawk at the fat content and walk out of the store in a huff. I mean, if I want a cookie, I'm eating the cookie knowing that it's bad for me (and even secretly reveling in that fact).

If enacted, the regulation will go into effect March 31. So, until then, we can remain uneducated, bumbling masses. Sound good?

When I hear the phrase spam and eggs the first thing I usually think of is Monty Python. That's not to say that I haven't ever enjoyed the guilty pleasure of a sandwich of scrambled eggs and Spam. But the much maligned potted meat is more than an occasional meal item in Hawaii, it's an institution.

McDonald's has offered the pinkish mystery meat as part of its breakfast menu in Hawaii for five years. Now its rival Burger King is getting in on the action. The King recently began offering the Spam Platter, which consists of two slabs of Spam, flanked on either side by white rice and scrambled eggs. The Croissanwich or Biscuit Sandwich with Spam have also been added to the menu. I wonder if they've created any ad spots with the King flashing the "hang loose" sign with one hand while digging into a Spam platter with the other.

In a move that I'm sure has animal rights activists everywhere celebrating, Burger King has announced that they are to begin purchasing a portion of their eggs and pork products from suppliers that do not keep their animals in cages or crates.

In letters sent to PETA, BK outlined their new company supply guidelines. Ten percent of their pork already comes from suppliers who don't use sow gestation crates, and they plan to double that number by the end of 2007. They are also planning to source 2 percent of their egg purchases from hens that are not confined, a number they also plan to double by year end.

Though 2 percent may seem almost insignificant at first, Burger King's buying power could force more and more suppliers to switch to cage-free environments for their animals. Never wanting to be upstaged, I'm sure McDonald's and some of the other big names in fast food are likely to follow this example as well.

We are not big fans of Burger King's creepy ad mascot, The King, and we know that we're not the only ones who feel a little uneasy when his commercials come on. Burger King, and the various advertising firms that represent them, likes to take their promotions into that extreme zone, though, so perhaps we should just be glad that their advertising isn't worse than it already is.

For example, take a look at this Burger King Germany wrapper, which contains instructions for building a throne to your Whopper out of ketchup packets and french fries. According to the person who photographed the wrapper and submitted it to Instructables, the directions say that the throne is for resting your burger and worshiping it.

Let's be glad that they haven't incorporated this idea into their King-centric US advertising yet. Can you imagine how strange the commercials would get?

[via tfs]

I admit that I did not think it was possible for the King, the strangely masked man of Burger King TV commercial fame, to get any creepier. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Burger King is promoting Sneak King, an inexpensive and ad-laden Xbox 360 game that features - you guessed it - the King. Instead of standing around and fraternizing with attractive women, he hides, creeps and sneaks around the virtual world in which he lives, jumping out from behind objects to force burgers on unsuspecting people. The image of being stalked by the King (as seen in the above trailer) is enough to make you sleep with the lights on just to be on the safe side.

The only reason to buy the game ($3.99 at Burger King) is (a) if you just shelled out for an Xbox 360, don't have the budget for better games and are really desperate to play it or (b) you have some crazy fantasy about being the King, which who the player controls in the game. If you're buying it for the first reason, that's somewhat understandable. If it's the second...

Fast-food has been taking a beating in Europe of late. On the heels of the U.K.'s decision to ban fast-food ads on kids TV shows comes Spain's attack on Burger King. The country's Health Ministry asked BK to pull an ad campaign for its XXL Burger because it violates a national initiative against obesity. The initiative, which BK had signed on to as a member of a hotel and restaurant group, aims to curb ads for huges servings of food.

The supersized burger contains 971 calories – the equivalent of 10 fried eggs – and 25 grams of saturated fat. And that's without condiments. Burger King's Spanish web site almost seems to be saying a heart-clogging burger is healthful. It calls the XXL a Whopper, "with two enormous portions of flame-broiled meat that will give you all the energy you need to take the world by storm.'' The only thing I'd be taking by storm after eating the XXL would be the men's room.

Burger King says it has no plans to scuttle the ad campaign. If I were them I'd change the name from XXL to gordo.

It's hard to believe that Burger King ads could get too much worse than the ones that featured The King, but they have gone from weird to weirder. This Eat Like a Snake ad features a man drawn to a triple Whopper that a friend has carelessly abandoned on the lunchroom table. He slithers snakelike across the floor, unhinges his jaw and swallows the sandwich whole.

Usually, even fast food restaurants try to make it seem like diners are savoring the flavor of their foods, but all this one seems to be doing is encouraging binge eating, as snake-man doesn't seem to have tasted the burger at all. It might even be encouraging bulimia on top of compulsive eating, as more than a few people expressed the desire to void their last meal - fast food or not - after watching that burger go down in one mouthful.

[via supersizedmeals]

As a general rule, when participating in some sort of illicit activity, it is best to do it in secret. This is why binge eaters keep boxes of cookies stashed in their cars and bedside tables, and drug users don't usually walk down the street offing to share with passers-by. Similarly, it is not a good idea to, say, put those drugs into burgers at the restaurant where you work - especially not if you are going to serve those burgers to police officers.

This was the lapse in judgment suffered by three Burger King employees in New Mexico. The officers noticed that something was amiss after a few bites of burger and used a field testing kit to determine the source of the problem. The trio was arrested for aggravated battery on an officer (a felony) and possession of marijuana.

There is also a video available that corresponds with the story, if you want to see more.

Unless you've been off the grid for the past few years, you know that fast food has been taken to task for it's being, gasp, horrible for one's health. Those laying the blame have included most notably writer Eric Schlosser in his scathing book that indicts Mickey D's et. al. and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.

Now a lawsuit in California against Burger King Holdings and CKE Restaurants, which operates more than 1,000 Carl's Junior Restaurants, may spell trouble for operators that flame-broil their burgers.

The suit alleges that the companies violated the state's Proposition 65 by not alerting their customers that charbroiled hamburgers could contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have been implicated as potential carcinogens. The plaintiff says that if the court rules in its favor it may sue other restaurants. If the case succeeds, the restaurants will either post warnings or install cooking devices designed to remove PAHs from food.

PAHs are created by incompletely burning organic substances. Long-term exposure to PAHs has been linked to cancer in humans. Not to make light of cancer but I'm not terribly worried about this carcinogen. Here's why: PAHs are created whenever any meat is grilled. How could something as good as a strip steak possibly be bad for you?

These days, it seems you can't go out to eat at a chain restaurant or a fast food joint without being bombarded by "New! Healthy!" offerings. The restaurants are responding to what seems like America's focus on kicking obesity and getting healthy.

But on the other end, there's a faction of restaurant that are completely ignoring health and in fact, are swinging their menus toward totally indulgent. According to the Wilmington Star, these restaurants are "promoting the consumption of copious amounts of food. And nutritionists are calling these offerings anything but healthy." A look at just a few:

• Burger King's new BK Stackers - customers can "super-size" their hamburger to include as many as four slabs of beef, four slices of cheese and four strips of bacon. Ads show the "Stackers Union" piling on "more meat" at the cry of the foreman.
• Denny's Extreme Grand Slam Breakfast - three strips of bacon, three sausage links, two eggs, hash browns and three pancakes, because customers shouldn't have to choose between bacon and sausage.

Now, I am certainly all about people being responsible for their own choices when they eat. If you are watching what you eat, dieting, or trying to stay healthy, and are faced with something like this from a restaurant, you should be mature enough to say "no." And if you cave in, well, that's your own fault, right?

On the other hand, nutrition advocates are calling the indulgent foods socially irresponsible on the part of restaurants, because rising obesity rates and diet-related diseases like diabetes are not secrets.

What do you think? Are restaurants being socially irresponsible by offering close to 1500 calories, more than half the recommended daily intake of sodium, and just way too much fat in one meal? Or are we just trying to find a scapegoat for our own inability to say "no?"

 Cinematical has just reported that Burger King is planning to make a feature length feature film that will, of course, advertise the fast food restaurant.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

According to an article in Advertising Age Magazine, the company is in the process of developing a script for a situation comedy that takes place in an apartment above a Burger King. Working with the ad firm Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the movie "will be a cross between Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, Raising Victor Vargas and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, intentionally avoiding the kind of dumb comedy featured in another fast-food-advertisement of a movie, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. "

Huge mistake. Well, the movie at all is a huge mistake, but the reason that the White Castle flick was so surprisingly successful was because it was silly. It didn't take itself seriously. And, clearly, the Burger King people are dead serious about this.

Burger King isn't planning to have the King in the film, but with the crack team of ad wizards that work for BK, who knows what they'll end up churning out even without including him.