Behind the Scenes of a McDonald's Photo Shoot

I would add that a major difference is that the food stylist's version had a patty that was only seared on the outside, and mostly uncooked.

The scariest part is this:

the moment you see the insides of a McD restaurant, your mouth starts to water automatically and uncontrollably.

Only once in my life have I had a hamburger that looked like the promotional photo. It was at Burger King and the Whopper they gave me looked absolutely perfect. I was stunned. It felt like I was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Sadly it ended up also being the only time I got food poisoning from a hamburger. From now on, I'll happily accept the smushed non-toxic version and leave pretty to the advertisements.

I worked in a photo studio for some years as a photo retoucher (and I still work for them but as a free lancer) and there was a time every year, before the beginning of summer, when an ice cream company required photos of their products. They made those ice creams and iced cakes you can buy at supermarkets. For the regular ice creams, they took the pictures of the real thing before it melted (they had to be quick for that!), and luckily I could eat them as they finished with each shoot! But for the iced cakes, the usually created a strange combination, filling them with cardboard and other things that were not edible.

Sometimes when a restaurant asked for pictures, they brought a cook/crafter that used real pasta on the plates, but for cheese they put some sort of paint that really looked like the real thing (and on the pictures looked delicious), but just the thought of it made me sick.

The restaurant burger looks so nasty and pathetic. She even looks like she throws up a little in her mouth when she sees it, puts on a brave face, and then exclaims how delicious it looks.