Hungry Horse Pub chain criticised for calorific doughnut burger, but rub hands with glee at much free publicity

It's one of those stories that appear all the time on the internet and once people take hold of the idea everyone has an opinion. It's the news that"Family friendly" pub chain Hungry Horse has been criticised for creating a burger containing nearly 100% of a woman's recommended daily calorie intake at 1,996 calories.

It's interesting to note that when they came up with the idea they didn't make it more than a woman's recommended calorie intake because surely that would have created more of the outrage that they wanted to stir up?

The Double Donut burger consists of two beef burgers topped with cheese, four bacon rashers and BBQ sauce, sandwiched between two glazed ring-doughnuts.

Critics ( who the Hungry Horse pub chain may well have recruited, because that's how PR works) called it irresponsible, dubbing it "a heart attack on a plate".

Hungry Horse said it was catering for a variety of tastes.

"We have a slogan for huge burgerwhich really gets people talking":Imagines PR company

Advertised with the tag line "So Wrong It's Right", the Double Donut burger contains 53g of saturated fat, well above the 20g daily allowance for women and 30g allowance for men.

The amount of salt in it - 8.2g - is also more than the recommended daily amount for adults (6g).

Quick let's get an expert to comment..

When you are creating a publicity campaign you need to get someone to speak out, so this time it is Mel Wakeman, senior lecturer in Applied Physiology at Birmingham City University, who said: "To me, this is simply ludicrous and irresponsible. I am no killjoy but why is this sort of food available?"

Here's how this all works....You create a product and then find someone to say it is bad for you...stand back and wait for the publicity. Both Hungry Horse and Ms. Wakeman are seeing themselves plastered across the media. Radio stations are preparing phone-ins because they know that people love to talk about things like this. It is as poular for them as talking about dustbin collections and fat people on benefits.

There are really only two sides....love it..or hate it.

Hungry Horse said it displayed all the nutritional information and guideline daily amounts for men, women and children on its website. On searching, you can find a BBQ Pulled Pork (Wo)Man Vs Burrito that contains nearly 3,500 calories, 65g of fat and 13g of salt. So clearly they already offer much more calorific products...but where is the publicity in them?

Mel Wakeman argues: "Why can't they include on the menu what the customer would need to do to burn all those calories off? In the case of this Double Donut Burger, around three hours of continuous running should just about do it. I wonder how many people would still opt for the item knowing this."

Steve Jebson for Hungry Horse, said: "Our popular menu caters for a variety of tastes and appetites and includes everything from lower calorie options such as our hot chicken and bacon salad at 393 calories, through to the indulgent occasional treat such as our new Double Donut Burger. All the nutritional information for our menu is available on our website and in our pubs, so that our customers are able to make informed decisions about what they choose to eat."

Here's what is really happening..

Nothing. Yep that's it. No one will order this, and in a few weeks time it will be forgotten. Perhaps a couple of groups of people on Christmas parties will think it is something amusing, but no one will really want to eat it because it looks disgusting!  But, that wasn't why they made it. They made it so you would talk about the brand and to get some brand coverage. So job done....

Redditch Hypnotherapist Mark Powlett Offers to Hypnotise people not to eat giant burger

Of course, I could be jumping on the bandwagon too and offering to hypnotise people into not eating it...but I don't need to. I can look at the pictures read about it and know that you don't really fancy it, and even if you did order it you wouldn't eat it all.

I enjoy helping people to lose weight and understand that they don't need to be on a diet to do this.

So guess what. If you were working with me and suggested that you were going to eat one I would say "Go for it".  You won't like it anyway  :)

Slimmer You No More Diets Programme details CLICK HERE

Derren Brown rarely gives longer interviews so when he spoke to comedian Chris Addison about his career and the techniques that he uses it made for a fascinating radio interview.

He talks about how his friends think that eveything he is saying is some sort of psychological trick. He suggests that many people are a bit wary about talking to him just in case. The good news is that people are not asking him all the time to do tricks for them.

In his first year of University he saw a hypnotist performing called Martin Taylor and was inspired to learn ahout hypnosis and so his career was born.

Talking about his shows Mind Control, Russian Roulette and Heist it reminds us how many shows and appearances Derren has made and how rich his career has been. He even persuaded someone to shoot Stephen Fry...with blanks fortunately!

You can listen to the full radio interview here:

He tells a very interesting story about reality TV shows and a friend who was involved in one and how after asking him to tell them all the awkward stories that could get sold to the press...they then leaked the very same stories.

Hearing him talk about psychics and his opinion on them I saw parallels with the thoughts that James Randi has on Uri Geller.

You can also read much more about Derren and some of the secrets from behind the scenes is these previous blogs...

You can read Blogs about Derren Brown and how he uses hypnosis in his performance written from my point of view as a Clinical Hypnotherapist here:

Fear and Faith: How does he do it... http://www.markpowlett.co.uk/myblog/r...

Apocalypse: Behind the Scenes... http://www.markpowlett.co.uk/myblog/r...

Part two of Apocalypse: http://www.markpowlett.co.uk/myblog/r...