Tidbites | Week of Oct. 16, 2014

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Mythbusters co-host Grant Imahara has been hired to make videos for McDonalds

RED BULL DOES NOT GIVE YOU WINGS, BUT IT WILL GIVE YOU RED BULL 

Hey there American litigant. Have you drank a Red Bull anytime since 2002? Never had one in your life? Doesn’t matter. Either way, Johnny Law says Red Bull owes you some chedda.

Last week, the beverage company chose not to fight a lawsuit disputing its advertising claims, instead settling and agreeing to give everyone that has purchased a Red Bull a $10 refund, or $15 worth of Red Bull products. But since it’s pretty unlikely that the world at large has been keeping its Red Bull receipts in a drawer, then twirling a mustache and cackling as they wait for payday to roll in, they’re just giving it to anyone who fills out the form.

Get your non-wing-giving beverage on at www.energydrinksettlement.com.

— Josh Gross

MCDONALD’S HIRES A MYTHBUSTER 

Tired of being the foodie world’s punchline, McDonald’s is pulling out the big guns: mythbusters.

The world’s biggest restaurant chain hired Grant Imahara, a co-host of Discovery Channel’s hit show, MythBusters, to make a web-series marketing campaign called Our Food Your Questions, which will apply the show’s process to questions posed by diners and critics about McDonald’s chow. There will also be McDonald’s PR hacks answering questions in real time. 

The web portal has been officially launched in Canada and Australia, and has taken up questions like, “Why does your food have to be so high fat?” “Are there mealworms used as fillers in the hamburgers?” and “How is it that a McDonald’s burger does not rot?” But some of fast food’s critics aren’t impressed.

“Because the company’s supply chain is so long, and it sources raw ingredients from such a wide array of locations and facilities, it would be impossible for any one tour, vignette or infographic to show more than a sliver of what goes on at the farm, factory and processing levels,” Civil Eats editor Naomi Starkman wrote in Time.

Starkman also took issue with some of the questions that weren’t being asked, like those about the ingredients with names that aren’t as catchy as “pink slime.”

So, yo, Ronnie M., We’ve got a question: Since hamburgers are made from dead animals, and Mayor McCheese has a hamburger for a head, doesn’t that make him a zombie? Are all your cheeseburgers zombies, or just that one? Are any of your other products still sentient and capable of governance if you slap them on top of a torso? Seriously.

Read more at http://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/.

— Josh Gross

GREAT PATE MOM, BUT I GOTTA MOTOMAKI IF I’M GOING TO MAKE THAT FUNERAL 

Back in January, Tidbites told you about Motomaki, a new venture from the sushi and weed-pairing visionaries at Hapa. Of course, back then, we told you it would be open in April. It wasn’t. Getting its digs in the Twenty Ninth Street mall up to snuff took a bit longer than expected.

However, it is open now, slinging rapid-service and affordable sushi rolls made with crab, curry, Burmese fish, shrimp, seared tuna and more, poke bowls and a series of salads. Yummers.

Motomaki is open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day and located at 1600 28th St., Suite 1216.

— Josh Gross