I don’t eat Western fast food* often perhaps once every 6 – 12 months. However, when I travel, I do like to go to different countries and see what their fastfood versions are like.

*McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC, you get the idea. I consider Vietnamese pho, Middle Eastern shawarmas and all that stuff to be fast food as well.

For instance, in Paris, France, the McDonald’s cafes sold macarons. 🙂

They didn’t look anything like the photo below, although they were very tasty. Cake-like and blasphemous at the same time**.

Citron (Lemon) pictured below was my favourite. My mouth is watering.

**All Parisians swear up and down that that Ladurée is the best in Paris but my unsophisticated and plebian tastes preferred the McDonald’s version. More like a cake. Less like whipped air. In my defense, BF is originally from France and says he preferred the McDonald’s version too.

So when I take a look at these following images of fast food advertisements versus reality, I’m slightly disgusted but fascinated at the same time:

Conclusion? We all knew this, but as is with all media, take anything you see, read or hear with a grain of salt.

Note: I said “media” because even watching the news can shape your world view. Television shows, movies, anything you watch and consume as a media consumer, has an agenda. Figure out what it is and then proceed.

These are images all taken from a fabulously documented site called: Fast Food – Ads vs. Reality. You can see more the site.

Update as of June 22 2011: I was sort of troll-ishly informed in the comments that the images come from a truer source site from someone named “Dario D”. I googled his name and realized that I DID reference his site (see above link)

Again, the “fabulously documented site” is called Fast Food – Ads vs. Reality by Dario D.

Here are more from another site called Pics Roll: