Not getting what you expected at the fast food restaurant? Ordered chicken fillets burgers with a fresh garden salad and a large size bucket of crispy fries and been disappointed? The meal does not resemble the advertisements in any manner whatsoever, the chicken tastes like an old boot, the limp salad is playing hide-and-seek beneath the bun and the sauce tastes like granny's burnt custard. The fries are so burnt your teeth are in danger of breaking if you dare chew them. How can this be? This fast food meal was advertised on television as the best in the county!
You're not the first and you won't be the last to be let down, it's all in the quality of the photography and mind play that advertisers carry out. Day and night, day in, day out, we are bombarded with advertisements for tasty moist cakes, scrumptious kebabs, lemon meringue pies which melt in the mouth and so much more. But that huge thick meat patty shown on television looks nothing at all like the anorexic patty you've finally found hidden beneath the lettuce on your bread roll.
The big juicy flame grilled steak sandwich which made you salivate while watching television ends up being nothing more than a piece of thin chewy leather. Obviously you're annoyed and want to know why fast food always looks better on television and in magazines than in reality. Those ads were extremely impressive, but now you wish to find out why you paid good money for something which doesn't look at all like you imagined.
Having been involved in the television industry as a child, quite a few lessons were learned. Photography and know-how go hand in hand. Good lighting, color enhancement, food coloring and so much more goes into food photography preparation. Don't blame the poor kid who served you the unsatisfactory meal, blame the companies who hire these crafty professional photographers, make-up artists and marketing agents, it's their tricks of the trade which sell.
Another thing to remember is that makeup artists don't just work on faces, they are frequently engaged in beautifying a host of things such as foods, pets and so forth. It doesn't take much to airbrush a picture, enlarge it, or even add color and substance to its presentation. Television is not all about reality, it's often about image. Allow me to elaborate.
PHOTOGRAHY:
With such advancements in technology it's a well known fact that we can alter numerous things in regards to photographs. Thin people can be made to look fat and vice versa. Tomatoes, beef patties and so forth can be made to look humongous. We can define the colour more, add texture and enhance the clarity of a photo so much. The angle from which a picture is taken makes a difference as well.
Real estate agents use the tricks of the trade to enhance the size of a bedroom and make it appear so much larger. Go into Photoshop on your computer and see exactly how much you can alter a photograph. Props are used frequently in photography and these can incorporate the use of artificial buns and meat patties made from Styrofoam and other authentic looking materials. Plastic meat patties have been used frequently and this gives them that dark glossy juicy appeal.
Even ice-cream cones are often plastic or made from a number of synthetic materials.Have you ever seen a billboard advertising ice-cream which is melting? Photographers would be up to their elbow in sticky goo if they always photographed a real ice-cream cone? I remember when I was a small child sitting on the set of Reg Lindsay's Country Music Hour. I was drooling at the food a young woman was taking into the next studio, she stopped in front of me, poked the steak, smiled and said Kiddo put your eyes back in your head, it's not real, it's plastic!
FOOD ASSEMBLY:
Of course in reference to burgers and sandwiches, all one need do is make a larger burger or cut bread thicker to make it more appealing. The photographer then photographs the food and bingo, we are thinking we will get the very same. Food colouring is often added to lettuce to enhance the green or tomatoes to make them appear redder and juicier.It's often added to steaks to make them appear more scrumptious. In actual fact, sometimes the juices we see running off the plate in an advertisement is nothing more than Worcestershire sauce!
When you head through the drive thru, remember that the kids taking your order and assembling your burger and fries are not sculpturers. They're just kids in a hurry to serve everyone, time is limited and they are not trained to do anything other than whack a burger together using the assembly code. The fast food assembly code simply states that they must use so many ounces of cheese, one pickle, a slice of tomato etc, it does not say that they must make a burger which will win a award in an art studio.
RACING AGAINST TIME:
Can you imagine how long it would take to be served if every order taken in a restaurant or fast food store was treated as a meal for Her Majesty the Queen? We'd be waiting for days to be fed. Fast food is defined as food made quickly for people on the go. Fast food is not defined as foods cooked by master chefs or attractive in presentation. McDonald's, Burger King and their competitors are all attempting to serve you as fast as they can. Presentation is not their main concern, serving you in the shortest period of time is.
HUNGER VERSUS PRESENTATION:
Although we may be disappointed with the burger, pizza, fried chicken etc which we ordered, we very seldom return it and complain. Many of us simply hate making a fuss, besides we're usually hungry by the time our meal is ready. Unless the meat is off or the bun is stale, we eat the meal and sulk in silence. Perchance we don't wish to upset the young lad or lass who served us or we hate to draw attention to ourselves. More often than not we are on limited time and would rather eat something than nothing; the burger tastes fine although it looks like it was assembled by a toddler. Therefore we wonder if it's worth complaining at all.
SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES:
Although subliminal messages have been outlawed by a host of bylaws, don't fool yourself that they don't exist. Subliminal messages are what compel us to enter a particular fast food store in the first place. Two billboards on the freeway may both advertise Kentucky style chicken, yet the one with the better picture (the drawcard) will appeal to your hunger more. Instead of making a left hand turn off the freeway to Krispy Chicken, you will travel an extra mile to purchase Kentucky Fried. Obviously you have been lured by the photographic presentation.
Author's note:
Fast food is not about attractive meals although we are often misled to think otherwise. The burgers we order from the drive thru, the KFC we purchase by the bucket loads are all classified as mass produced products. Grilled, fried, broiled etc and slapped together in a hurry, if you want a succulent meal forget fast food restaurants and dine in an elite restaurant. With fast foods we basically get what we paid for, a meal put together quickly to curb our appetites, nothing more, nothing less.