kartooner

The next time you pull up to a drive-thru win­dow at your local fast food joint, think of this: 100-percent of the food you’re eat­ing has been altered chem­i­cally in a cor­po­rate lab.

I’m not rant­ing over the sub­ject nor am I throw­ing up a protest sign, on the con­trary, I find R&D (Research and Devel­op­ment) fas­ci­nat­ing. For instance, Wendy’s Research and Devel­op­ment teams use a com­bi­na­tion of off the shelf McCormick spices and chem­i­cals to con­coct, to the minute detail and tex­ture, the taste of every­thing from ham­burg­ers to chicken ten­ders. Com­bi­na­tions are throughly tested and refined for that per­fect taste that you so often hear about in mar­ket­ing advertisements.

The key to this process of find­ing a new taste is the R&D sen­sory pan­els; hand­picked ‘reg­u­lar peo­ple’ who rep­re­sent a spe­cific per­cent­age of the fast food eat­ing pub­lic. These indi­vid­u­als are placed in tiny cubi­cles and are instructed not to talk to whomever is next to them, as to pre­vent any unfair crit­i­cism or biased opin­ions. The sen­sory pan­elists are then instructed to eat what­ever item is in front of them, be it a spe­cial sauce or a poten­tial new food item. Crack­ers are even pro­vided to ‘cleanse the palette’ inbe­tween ses­sions, much like a restaurant’s use of fine wine or a mid-meal salad. After­wards the pan­elists are then asked to answer a sim­ple questionnaire.

These ques­tions — much like those that are given to tele­vi­sion pre­view pan­els — func­tion as impor­tant pieces of the devel­op­ment puz­zle. They might ask the pan­elist if they enjoyed the taste of the mus­tard sauce, or to describe the tex­ture of the meat, and this direct input is tal­lied and care­fully con­sid­ered whether the item will be green­lighted or shelved.

Some exam­ples of failed ham­burger acces­sories are:

• Pep­per­oni
• Salami
• Cana­dian Bacon
• Feta Cheese

Salami on a ham­burger patty? I just can’t stom­ach the thought.