Fast-food turf wars are nothing new. Whether trying to outdo each other with the most ridiculous novelty food items or encroaching on each other’s proprietary foodscapes, many mainstream restaurants don’t seem shy about pushing the limits of what substances of questionable nature and origin humans will slip down their esophaguses.
What’s new is when one restaurant openly mocks the others for it with an amazing product like Jamba Juice’s Cheeseburger Chill Smoothie, “a delightful mix of real beefy goodness, smothered in cheese, loaded with your favorite condiments and blended to creamy perfection.”
Slurp up the action:
“Is Jamba Juice getting into the burger business? No way. But it does seem some burger chains are getting into the smoothie business — which to us, is about as weird as a Cheeseburger Chill Smoothie,” explains Jamba Juice’s CheeseburgerChill.com prank site, which offers a coupon to lure freewheeling smoothie-sippers back their way. They’re talking to you, McDonald’s “real fruit smoothies.” (Which actually have more calories than their basic cheeseburger [PDF] — and up to 70 grams of sugar!)
Hat tip to Eater.com for news of the well-blended joke and marketing spin. Also of note is Eater.com’s labeling of these hard-to-digest food shenanigans as the “gross foods movement.” We whole-food-heartedly agree with that assessment; in fact, it’s what we’ve been digesting here on Grist under the banner “WTFood.”
What other evidence have you seen of the gross foods movement?
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