McDonald's Avocado Burgers (product information)

When I was 19 years old, I decided to stop eating beef and pork. That put a whole world of food out of my reach because, back in those days, most people didn't eat chicken unless they were too poor for beef or it came fried in a bucket and turkey as a mainstay of regular eating hadn't yet become a part of the American food culture. I know this because I listened to my 22-year-old self on an ancient tape (1987) tell my future husband (then merely a pen pal) about turkey burgers. He had no experience with those tubes of ground turkey that I was then using as a way of substituting for cheeseburgers. I recall very well that they were not only lower in calories and tastier (at least in my estimation), but also much cheaper. Oh, how things have changed... these days, if it is leaner, healthier, and better for you, it is more expensive. Taste no longer rules the roost when it comes to cost.

The prices of avocados are going up due to drought and I guess random needs to charge more for sources of healthy fat and highly nutritious food. I don't know if avocados were cheap 27 years ago, but I'm betting they weren't nearly as popular nor as valued. All I know is that they are now $2 each when they were a dollar each or less two years ago. In light of this, it seems odd that McDonald's is offering avocado burgers. Of course, I believe those generous chunks of avocado as seen on the picture above are a big, fat lie, but they'll have to make it noticeable if they're going to live up to the name.

There are three choices of burger: beef with bacon, onion, cheddar and wasabi; fried chicken with cheddar cheese and what they call a "Cobb salad" sauce which includes coriander, chili and black pepper; a fried shrimp patty with the same Cobb salad sauce (no cheese). Each burger comes on a ciabatta roll which I'm sure will be as fresh and tasty as if it had come from an Italian bakery. 

McDonald's Sakura Burger

Recently, I conducted a Skype lesson with one of my former face to face students from Japan. She pointed out to me that my picture for Skype was the McDonald's Sakura burger. I told her that it was an ancient picture that I really should change. The reason I put it up there was that I had the picture on my desktop, likely for this blog (though I think I never used it). My student pointed out that this burger was being re-released, so I checked it out and, it is back (released March 21).

The burger is supposed to have a "faint cherry scent" and you can see that the bun has some pink in it. The meat is a pork patty and it includes teriyaki sauce and an egg (it's called sakura teri tama - cherry teriyaki egg). The sauce is mayonnaise based and also includes ginger. Frankly, it all sounds like a real mess of flavors which probably don't have a good chance of meshing. I wouldn't touch this burger with a ten-foot-pole, but then I wouldn't touch any fast food burger. If you give this a try, let me know if all of the flavors play nice together.

Burger King "King's Harvest" Burgers (product information)

It's interesting that America is always tagged for its large-size offerings - especially when it comes to things that are unhealthy like fast food - but Japan is the place that has sold monster burgers and giant kakigori (shaved ice). For the record, the kakigori in the linked video isn't nearly the biggest one I've seen shown on T.V. It's just one that I found an easy connection to showing.

The "King's Harvest" burgers, released on September 27 in Japan, include a "big bacon whopper" which has what looks like a strip of bacon the was carved from the full length of a whole piglet. The more modest sandwich on the right is a BK bolognese and includes, unsurprisngly, bolognese sauce. Both also include a hash brown patty. This is to make sure that, if you were worried about consuming sufficient carbohydrates and saturated fat, that you have nothing to worry about.

It's interesting that these are called "King's Harvest". Presumably, a "harvest" means plants. Unless those plants happen to be potatoes, there's little about these that says "harvest" and more that saws "slaughter". Though I wouldn't try this if I were in Japan now, my husband said that he would try the bacon burger. However, he'd take out the hash brown patty and eat it separately.

Subway Japan Coarse Ground Sausage Sandwich and Mos Lettuce Burger (product information)

Subway has decided that the best way to manage the super hot summer is to offer up a big old wiener sandwich. Why go for some cool cold cuts on a bed of veggies when you can eat a hot sausage with cream cheese sauce that weighs in at 445 calories. I'm not suggesting that Subway is always the epitome of healthy eating, but that is the way they sell themselves. I'd think it'd be better to opt for something lighter for summer than a bit of sausage.

Mos Burger, on the other hand, is offering a "lettuce burger" to allow the Japanese market to embrace low carb living. You can substitute lettuce, iceberg, of course, for the bun on several different burgers (fish, beef, chicken, teriyaki chicken, pork cutlet). Though I recognize the nutritional value of a bun is pretty much zero and that this is a better choice from that viewpoint, to me, a burger is not a burger unless it comes between two starched planes.