The 34-Day-Old Whopper

“The beauty of real food is that it gets ugly”, so says Burger King in their new ad campaign. 

The said commercial demonstrates a time-lapse of 34 days to show exactly how long it takes for their new burgers to decompose. While it isn’t pretty to watch, it shows BK’s pledge to say farewell to the artificial preservatives and instead serve their customers a healthier meal.

As Fernando Machado, Restaurant Brands International Global Chief Marketing Officer says: “At Burger King restaurants, we believe that real food tastes better. That’s why we are working hard to remove preservatives, colors, and flavors from artificial sources from the food we serve in all countries around the world”.

I'm sure there will be many who applaud Burger King for their novel yet unorthodox approach, and there will be just as many who would be left with a bad taste in their mouths. In any case, it has generated a lot of social media chatter around the brand.

The number of Covid-19 infections across Latin America surpassed 100,000 on Sunday with nearly 5,000 deaths, according to an AFP tally based on numbers reported by individual countries. 

The “official” figures indicated 100,952 new cases – the 7 countries featured above constitute 89.4% of the total – with 4,924 fatalities. But be aware that those numbers may be just the tip of the iceberg. 

As Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno (right) had confessed on April 02: "We know that in terms of both the number of infections and deaths, official records fall short. Reality always exceeds the number of tests and the speed with which we pay attention". 

In any case, this is a worrisome development because while the United States and Europe have so far borne the brunt of the pandemic, infections have been steadily rising across Latin America which has little of the health infrastructure of its richer counterparts.