Burger King Tomato Rant
By Kira Hamman
I have been following this whole Burger King tomato thing with a mixture of interest and despair.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, tomato pickers in Florida are asking Burger King to pay a little more for tomatoes so that they can raise wages and work under better conditions.
The workers, who currently labor under pretty awful conditions for a below-poverty-level wage, are asking for one cent more per pound, and Burger King is claiming that it can’t possibly afford to pay that.
Now, I’m a mathematician, so let’s do a little math.
If you figure that there are at least two tomatoes per pound, and that each tomato takes care of, say, three whoppers, then the workers are asking for approximately one-sixth of a cent extra per whopper. It’s been a while since I ate a whopper, but I’m guessing that’s a pretty negligible price increase even for the fast food industry.
But here’s what really bothers me about this: the tomatoes are SO BAD! If I did eat whoppers, I think I would be willing to pay extra to have the tomato left off, so that I would not be compelled to ingest a mealy, mushy, tasteless slab of cellulose. Blech!
Why do people even want tomato on their whoppers? I ask you. Bad taste? Thoughtlessness? Habit? Or is there someone out there who actually thinks those things taste good?
*Sigh*
OK, back to the garden.
*Tip of the trowel to the women of Garden Rant, my new second-favorite gardening blog
May 11th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Greed and bad tomatoes. Lord help us.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
You are my new best friend. I LOVE the girls at Garden Rant!!
May 11th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
GREAT post, Kira! Your description of the “mealy, mushy, tasteless slab of cellulose. Blech!” qualitifes you for an instant One-Ben Award! Why do people eat mealy, etc. tomatoes? Why do they eat grey, skinny, mystery-meat fast-food burgers on spongy balloon-bread rolls when it would take about ten minutes to make thick, flavorful burgers at home and put them on real rolls with lots of first-class trimmings?! Sigh.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I wish I knew the answer to Ben’s questions. Actually, maybe it’s better that we don’t know. Sigh, indeed.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
The answer is that people are a product of the society in which they live, and fast food is a huge part of our culture. Thankfully there are those of us who actually think for ourselves and value taste and nutrition over “what can I get for 99 cents at the drive thru?”.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:31 am
That’s part of it, of course, but I think it’s more complicated than that. The heart of the matter has more to do with our culture’s divorce from our food sources. Michael Pollan’s wonderful book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” addresses this question in a clear, thoughtful, and (mostly) complete way. I recommend it to anyone who is concerned about/interested in these issues. Let me know what you think!
May 14th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
What a great post and sadly so true. Thanks for the laughs! Love your blog.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I work at a Burger King. I think it’s ridiculous we can’t pay a few cents more to workers who earn little in the first place. My salary is $7.25, so I get what they mean. It’s not a lot for me, and they probably get a lot less than me.