Burger King "solves" climate change with new fartless beef Whoppers

Issue 188: Plus, you can use your passport as a free Whopper punchcard at BK in Sweden. Can't make this stuff up, folks.

Hello! Welcome to Nosh Box, a lunchtime-ish food newsletter that recognizes that Burger King is indisputably the worst of the big 3 fast-food burger chains. Wendy’s is No. 1, obviously, though the bar is exceptionally low.

Read yesterday’s dispatch: Why you should care about seed diversity during COVID. Yes, you!

In today’s Nosh Box: Come for the Swedish passport stunt; stay for some burger greenwashing à la King.

In Sweden, the government has been particularly lax about its Covid-19 containment strategy, and it… hasn’t worked out too well. When other European countries reopened their borders, Swedes were not welcome. So, the question I know is on all our minds: What ever shall become of the Swedish passport? With Swedish people banned from traveling, will their passports be relegated to a summer of sitting untouched, unappreciated in a drawer?

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled passports yearning to be stamped, Burger King hath said. Because now, at Burger Kings in Sweden, you can use your passport as a stamp card to get free burgers. Even if your passport is expired! They explain in a press release (which Marion Nestle helpfully uploaded to her website)

Instead of your regular passport stamp, you’ll get a stamp that gives you a burger of your choice from the brand new World Gourmet-series — burgers inspired from different regions in the world. First out are burgers inspired by Argentina and France.

What exactly are these internationally inspired burgers? Well, glad you asked. The “French Cheese” burger (almost all of BK’s Swedish menu is actually in English) is graced with florantal cheese (this does not exist in real life), caramelized onions, and mustard mayo. And the “Argentinian Grill” burger has bacon and what Burger King has decided to call a “chimichurri sauce,” which begs the question: Has BK ever encountered chimichurri? Unclear. Based on the ingredients, this sauce appears to ALSO be a dijon mayonnaise, but with barely visible “aromatic herbs.” I’ll buy you a burger for the full purchase price of 79 kronor ($8.71 USD! Pricey stuff!) if you can spot them:

Appetizing. Both are also available “REBEL” style, which subs the beef for a plant-based patty. The idea of plant-based as rebellious or subversive, especially w/ the street-art-esque lettering they use, is interesting, if anyone’s in the market for a research project on meat and gender performance and capitalist consumption.

They have even produced what they’re calling a “film,” although it’s actually just a 39-second commercial spot.

Just imagine, post-pandemic, strolling up to a customs window when you arrive for your tropical vacation in, I don’t know, Canada, and handing the agent your passport with old stamps from Sweden, Thailand, Australia, and BURGER KING. Incredible.

This is not the only BK-related news I have for you today, though!

No no. Burger King, a meat company, wants you know they’re deeply concerned about the impact of meat production on the environment. And you know what drives livestock methane emissions? Cow farts.

So, Burger King asks, what if, instead of making any sort of structural or behavioral changes to the meat-based dietary-industrial complex, we just… got cows to fart less? Yep, that should do the trick.

Enter the Reduced Methane Emissions Beef Whopper (its true name), made with beef from cows whose diets have been supplemented with lemongrass. Are the cows being treated any more humanely or being fed a higher-quality diet otherwise? Who can say. In a very lengthy Restaurant Brands International post, BK explains how they’re helping cows have it their way, too:

From chamomile tea to baking soda, humans have used natural remedies to help with digestion-related challenges for centuries. So, what if the same natural remedies that help people take care of their stomach aches can help to reduce the impressive amounts of gases cows produce every single day? We teamed up with top level scientists in the US and Mexico to study different herbs, like chamomile, cosmos bipinnatus and lemongrass, in order to find a solution that could potentially benefit the environment and the millions of people that simply love meat.

As a result, we found that by adding 100 grams of dried lemongrass leaves to the cows’ daily feed, we were able to see a reduction of up to 33% on average of methane emissions during the period the diet was fed.

Climate change, solved!

And hey, because no greenwashing campaign is complete without a music video, Burger King got Mason Ramsey (the Walmart yodeling kid) to sing about the new fartless burgers:

I just… ok.

Although it’s just in test markets for now (Congrats, Miami, New York, Austin, Los Angeles and Portland!), maybe the rest of us will see this soon — if we dare to eat at Burger King, that is.

I know I’ve spent most of this newsletter joking around because, to me, both these marketing stunts — and that’s what they are, stunts — are patently ridiculous. But seriously: Just adding another input to cows’ industrialized feed (which, already, is typically not their natural diet) does not suddenly solve the myriad environmental problems with livestock production. Don’t be fooled.

Livestock production makes up about 39% of the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, with cows alone responsible for half that. Farts aren’t the only thing to think about here. Cows still poop, which also produces methane — how is manure management being handled by BK’s meat suppliers? A farm with 2,500 cows produces as much solid waste as a city of 411,000 people (!!!), and if it’s all being kept in large lagoons (as is common; stagnant manure lagoons also shoot massive quantities of methane into the air as it breaks down), nearby waterways are placed at exponentially higher risk. What’s the environmental impact of the rest of the cows’ feed? Where are cattle being housed, and what’s the footprint of those facilities?

And are BK’s suppliers sourcing the lemongrass ethically and sustainably? Are they contracting with beef ranchers who pay farmhands and laborers fair wages? Are they paying fair prices for the tomatoes, lettuce, etc. that’s also on these burgers, and sourcing them from farms with commitments to sustainable/regenerative/lower-emissions agriculture? Are people who work in Burger King restaurants making livable wages? I would be significantly more surprised if any of these answers were “yes” than “no.”

I shouldn’t have to say this, but this is not the way, folks.