That's actually kind of sad when you look at it that way... I wonder how long they spend making those display burgers look so perfect?

Sausage McMuffin and Filet o Fish look pretty similar.
This makes me want to quit fast food =/

Rodeo Cheeseburger all the way, though. BBQ sauce is beer goggles for burgers.

oh god..
One of  the many reasons i stopped eating fast foods.

This reminds me of a great scene from 'Falling Down'.

Lol, Epic Failure. I notice that stuff with easy to cook meals too, well practically everything you buy at the grocery store.

A lot of them look like someone just sat on the food that's in the picture on the left.

For what it's worth, the ads are usually fake food.  They use something that will look perfect through multiple shots.

Of course, they would look differently. If they look exactly like real food then no one would buy it.

The second one looks like dirt. So nasty.

I remember reading about the stuff they did in fast food ads in Zillions (Consumer Reports for Kids) back in the 90's.

I always wonder why people are surprised their food doesn't look like it does in the ad. Are they that stupid to believe it will?

who ever takes those photos must be rich

It's ironic because the food on the left looks perfect and tastier, but it's just a picture. Not only has it been worked on digitally but the food itself is altered soley for visual purposes.
Truth of the matter is that the food on right is the one that tastes better.

And honestly what kind of society are you apart that you don't eat food because it's ugly?

Am I a bad person if those pictures made me hungry? None of that's news to me so I settle for a sloppy cheese burger.

they still taste good so I dont really care.

Luckily im not in america so they still make quality food here.

Im always amazed at how terrible american fast food looks like, I mean really, do they try to make them badly or what?

The stuff ive gotten from Mcdonalds here looks exactly like the picture on the left....

Egg Mc Muffin is still pimp.

What the food looks like is not that important anyways when you're only going to look at it for like 5 seconds.

Wow, some of those really aren't looking so great. However I live in the UK and I've found that the McDonalds and Burger King outlets over here serve in general pretty well presented burgers.

to be fair you see this everywhere. action figures look incredibly detailed in pictures and then the boxed ones have half the detail. videogame pictures are usually doctored or rendered at a resolution you wont have. its just marketting

...and that's why I am a vegetarian.

This is what I like about Subway. It generally does look like it is meant to, they don't need to fake reality especially considering they are generous with the fresh salad options to go in the sandwich.

Interesting. But I still like eating those hamburgers.

Man, now I'm hungry.

Where the hell did they get that Arby's sandwich from? I know they dont always look good, but Ive never seen one that terrible

That subway one does not seem right, When I order at subway, it looks almost exactly like the poster o.O

Mashed potato bowl looks and IS more delicious than display picture. Just seeing that melted cheese, MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

You mean fast food products don't always appear as advertised?!

lol awesome comparison man. similar to magazines...

The filet of fish is the closest. It's so true though. Great thread.

Yeah, real life sucks. 

I didn't know Wendy's Chicken Club cheese was actually semen.

Jack in the Box stuff is pretty much the same as the commercial.
 
I haven't seen Arby's commercials recently but if the meat doesn't look like shit, that's a lie.

Round Table Pizza is a horrible offender of this issue.  They once had this pizza special where they used meatballs as the main topping.  I'm talking about gigantic meatballs too.  My friends and I bought one right when we saw the commercial and were thoroughly disappointed.  The "meatballs" they used were barely bigger than the sausage topping pizzas.

I knew a guy who worked for  food advertising.  
Most of those aren't real.  
Amazing work done by great artists that goes unnoticed. 

Food in ads goes through a thorough process to make it more appealing, not unlike adult photography. What basically happens is an edible piece of food is sprayed with a lot of inedible things then perfectly lit and angled.

Regardless of looks, the Wendy's Chick Club, KFC's Bowls, and Arby's Beef and Cheddar are awesome.

In Japan, any time I ate fast food it looked just like the way it did in the ads. Perfect to the sesame seed.
 
It was a bit unnerving to be honest.