by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: June 05, 2009   Last Updated: July 25, 2011

There are several reasons why fast food looks better in commercials than in person, but perhaps the main one is that commercials don't generally feature the harsh strip lighting of a fast food restaurant.

In any case, everyone has no doubt seen commercials for Burger King, McDonalds, KFC and the like, full of images of golden breadcrumbs coating succulent moist chunks of premium meat, laid on top of mounds of crisp fresh salad, coated in the most luxurious viscous sauces... And then you go to the restaurant, order one and get handed a sad little bun in a cardboard box, with a single limp lettuce frond dangling out of one side like a flag of surrender on behalf of nutrition. Chunks of already congealed cheese line the edges of the box. The cheese is orange, and you can use it to rub out spelling mistakes, even if you've been writing in biro. The meat is... well, so many gags about fast food restaurant meat have been made over the years that it's futile to even try and think of a new one. Feel free to insert your own, centring on the vermin of your choice.

So why is this the case? Why does it look so much better in the commercials, where the food looks genuinely tempting? The reasons for this are multiple and obvious. For a commercial, the food will have been cooked by a professional chef, using premium ingredients. A 'food stylist' will have been consulted to make it look absolutely mouthwatering (those are the guys who, among other things, prepare the food that's photographed for cookery books) presentation-wise. The production team behind the commercial will spend hours making sure that absolutely everything is perfect for filming the food, from the ingredients to the lighting.

And if for some reason the finished commercial shows that the food is looking a bit tired, the magical world of Computer Generated Imagery can touch up or remove any blemishes or nasty bits. Everything is controlled, everything is perfect. It's long been an adage of mine for film criticism that nothing you see on screen is an accident, and in this brave new world of digital supremacy, that really is the case more than ever before.

When you go to the restaurant, however, your food is 'cooked' in less than five minutes by a teenager who, with the best will in the world, is probably pre-occupied with wondering where their life went so badly wrong. It will be 'cooked' alongside a huge batch of others in an area which is not so much a kitchen, more a processing plant. It will be

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