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America proves once again that we will allow just about anything if it makes corpos money.
The advertising angle is likely what sank their case. Proving the food does not meet a technical specification, like not having a quarter pound of beef in a fully cooked patty, is easier to prove. But advertising has always been hyperbole.
A very important aspect that I think people overlook is that they use similar/same marketing photos of the food on their menu. That's not advertising, maybe that's what they will argue. If I look at a menu and they have a picture of the food, I'm going to expect I get what I see (within a margin) vs when I see an advertisement I expect it to be a bit hyperbolic.
You could argue that menus are just in-store advertising
A lot of things in stores have to add disclaimers about what is on the cover of the box vs what's on the inside. I don't see how fast food gets a pass on that. Or why people are just okay with it too.
Hey I'm not defending them, just trying to imagine what justification they'd use.
Yeah, that might be a good case. Isn't the weight advertised when it's frozen/before it's cooked? How can they call it a quarter pounder if half of it's weight is reduced before it's served to you?
Because that's how food works. You buy a 1lb steak at the butcher and you see him put it on the scale. You don't weight it when it comes off the grill. You might have added butter to it, and lost some weight to dripping and evaporation. It's sort of disengenuous, if you have ever cooked, to not understand that they don't weight cooked patties and throw out the ones that lost too much weight or whatever.
That example doesn't really translate. The butcher doesn't cook the meat for you, you take home one pound. If you're selling cooked meat products, you should have to provide an estimate for the weight of the finished product. One pound of frozen meat is going to weigh a lot less than one pound of thawed meat after it's cooked
Also they put a * next to the 1/4 pound that explicitly states that it is the patty prior to cooking because this has already been argued in court
The asterisk as I've seen is only on advertisements and it's really only there to shift responsibility away from the retailer towards the consumer. You won't see that kind of disclosure when you're there, looking at the menu. I don't understand the point you're making though, how is it the consumers responsibility to know that when the consumer can't verify? I can't very well inspect the meat and see if you're calling an iced over pound of meat "1lb" or if it's thawed, can I? That's how responsibility is supposed to work. If there isn't any proof offered, how can the consumer be responsible?
It's not a surprising result, but advertising now is entirely devolved into straight up lies. Have you seen the techniques they use during advertisements to make food look more appealing? They're advertising something which is entirely different from the delivered product. Under any kind of logical thinking, that's immoral and should be illegal. The fact that the current justice system serves corporations more than people doesn't justify it.
Hurray, they can keep showing us inedible objets d'art in food adverts!
The law favors corporate giants rather than real people? How surprising. Fuck McDonalds and Wendys
I feel a little guilty because while I rarely eat fast food anymore Wendy's is my favorite
Now, just to add more shit to that sandwich, remember what you said when you read that the Supreme Court has ruled several times that police officers ONLY duty is to uphold the law, and they have no duty or obligation to protect the citizens they police.
Did anyone really believe the corporate judge would do any differently?
Absolutely not. I remember when this was filled and I thought, "well this will be dismissed soon"
Poor guy now has to take care of a new yacht
The technical term is "puffery", which the FTC defines as "exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."
I just recently became aware of that term. Thanks!
"This is so backwards" one would think and then one realizes that all advertising is deception.
The judge tacitly acknowledges this truth.
I dunno, seems like the judge is explicitly acknowledging it.
I'm honestly confused. Didn't they show off before that they use the actual ingredients when doing photoshoots? Like no plastic or anything, just making the burger + good lighting, otherwise it's false advertising?
Of course if you then stick that burger into a tight squished wrapper it won't look the same, compared to serving it on a plate and setting it up nicely.
I think you're right I think some of the complaints was the advertisements show more ingredients in the sandwich so they appear larger than they actually are.
Non food items are allowed in commercials but not for the advertised product. The example I heard was Cheerios can use white glue as the milk in a cereal bowl because Cheerios don't sell milk. I need to look this stuff up more though.
I think one of the things the plaintiff is arguing, which I think is valid, is that the food is not prepared the same way even if the ingredients are the same. The example they use is that the burger patty is browned on the outside but not cooked through, so appears to be a much bigger portion of meat than is actually if the burger. It's similar to the bait and switch scam of putting all the filling at the top, making it appear the sandwich or burrito is filled with that quantity, but then you open it up and it's mostly empty.
I think the argument that "we said the exact weight so it's fine" is BS because few people intuitively understand how much ounces of meat or how many grams a sandwich is, but they can intuitively understand a picture of food.
But then you have to throw the book at literally all of advertising. On TV it shows my chocolate snack bar flying through the air, followed by a trail of shiny milk and a rainbow! And in reality all I get is a boring brown bar lazily sitting in the wrapper. There's also no penguin holding it for me, darn.
I mean you have all the weights there, you have the calories there and they put the same ingredients into the burgers that they use in the photo shoot. Yes, it might be prepared differently, but who cares? Who seriously expects their food to look exactly like the advertisement, regardless if it's a burger, a candy bar or whatever?
Sure, they could put photos on the menu that look exactly like what you get. But then you'll have trouble knowing what's in the burger (as most ingredients would be hidden) and it would look unappetizing. Nobody wants that.
....and it would look unappetizing. Nobody wants that.
There's the problem. How about trying to make your food more appetizing. . .
Dude, it's fast food. It comes delivered in a wrapper or a small box that has been moved around all over the place.
This is not high end eating where they serve you your burger on a proper plate (those ones actually look nice).
Wrong industry.
And if you don't like it, why the hell would you keep going there?
Who seriously expects their food to look exactly like the advertisement
If that was the case, why are they showing tasty burgers? And not like puppies or boobs or something that will engage more people?
If everyone knows what's on the screen is not their real food, why does it look suspiciously like their real food only tastier?
I mean, they often do?
Take TV advertisements for the food, there's often a mascot, actors and other props.
Or look at the menu for a milk shake, you only get a pink or beige or brown liquid, but the menu shows a chocolate bar, fruits or whatever. Nothing you can actually find in the food you then receive.
In 9 out of 10 cases the menu and ads are highly polished up and don't look like a photo of the real thing.
But they do. They show something that is close to the real thing, but not the real thing. The whole purpose is to deceive.
they often do?
You're missing the point. In an ad for a burger, why do they put a burger on the screen? Not the burger you'll actually get, but one that's similar but tastier looking.
they won, we all lost
When they’re ALL WRONG they gotta be right right?