The McDonald’s Corporation started 2012 with TV ads personalizing the multinational fast food giant through first-person “McDonald Stories” narrated by its rural, agricultural suppliers. A few days back McDonald’s took the human element a step further, inviting consumers to add their own 140-character #McDStories on Twitter, a recipe for disaster. McDonald’s found the results not to their taste, and 86ed the Twitter campaign.
More:
“#McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag,” Kashmir Hill,Forbes
In case you haven’t heard, Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies snack cakes, is filing for bankruptcy.
“I would like to think that Hostess Brands is yielding to a societal emphasis on artisanal eating — and the attractiveness of better-quality goods made down the street. But I fear that the reason involves management, distribution and commodity costs.”
– Peter P. Greweling of the Culinary Institute of America, quoted by Glenn Collins in “Imagining a World Without Twinkies,” New York TimesDiner’s Journal blog.
The true impact of this catastrophe will be blunted by the legendary long shelf life of Hostess cakes and the Pentagon”s massive Strategic Twinkie Reserves, but the USA will run out of Ho-Hos sometime after mid-century. Freight sidings across the country are crammed with abandoned tank cars full of vanilla creme that will never see the inside of a cupcake. Someone call the EPA.
More:
“Costly ingredients, healthier eating habits put Hostess in bankruptcy,” Mae Anderson And Michelle Chapman, AP via Detroit Free Press
When Christmas comes to Japan, thoughts turn to that jolly old man, Harland Sanders. Kentucky Fried Chicken came to the Land of the Rising Sun in 1970, and homesick expat Yanks soon began gobbling the deep-fried fowl for the holidays. Japanese folks give Yuletide luxury gifts to their sweeties, and many have adopted this exotic Christmas culinary custom, too. Those who can afford it, that is. A KFC Christmas Barrel costs about US$40.
So クリスマス用のケンタッキー (Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii! “Kentucky for Christmas!”) and to all a good night.
The French don’t hate Americans because of boorish Yank tourists. They don’t hate us because we’re sexual prudes or because we forced them into NATO. They hate us because we let Mattel Toys corrupt their petits garçons and make them slaves to la malbouffe (junk food).
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wants America’s kids and teens to stop chugging the sugary sports drinks and caffeinated energy drinks that make youngsters edgy and obese. This should not be news, since no one benefits from sports swill. Doctors agree that the best product for hydration is water.
A San Antonio Taco Bell customer, enraged that Beefy Crunch Burritos had gone up in price, fired an air gun at an employee and an assault rifle at police officers before barricading himself in a motel room. After a three-hour Mexican-food standoff, a police SWAT team eventually subdued the suspect, Ricardo Jones, 37, by using gas. Officers may have used jalapeño pepper gas.
A pizza a day keeps the Reaper away, at least in Memphis. That’s where Domino’s delivery driver Susan Guy noticed that 82-year-old Jean Wilson hadn’t ordered her daily Large-Thin-Crust-Pepperoni-With-2-Diet-Cokes in three whole days. Horrified, Ms. Guy alerted the authorities, who found the elderly pizza fan collapsed on the floor, and rushed her a hot, Double Cheese — um, no, rushed her to the hospital, where she’s doing fine. Except for the food.
Yet more proof the US doesn’t need your so-called “health care reform.” The private sector is doing just fine. Call 911 – thirty minutes, or it’s free.
During the 18-day Egyptian Revolution there was talk of a foreign provocateur in Tahrir Square, an American colonel. Colonel Sanders. Rumor had it that anti-Mubarak demonstrators were being paid off in Kentucky Fried Chicken. Raja Abdulrahim of the Los Angeles Times covered the story:
