Burger King’s Halloween Whopper causes an off-colour fright

Seasonal sandwich makes your poop bright green

By Alex Stanton, Staff Writer

In one of the more bizarre—albeit harmless—cases of widespread food “poisoning” among fast food franchises, Burger King has released a promotional, Halloween-themed version of their famous quarter-pound Whopper, and its black bun is reportedly altering the colour of the feces of just about every customer who eats it.

For the month of October, Burger King is celebrating Halloween with their A.1. Halloween Whopper for the first time in North America, following its debut in Japan the year before. Mere days into the month, however, social media was flooded with posts labelled with the unusual hashtag #greenpoop, as people discovered that the burger they eat comes out a much different hue than it was when it went in.

Consumer guide The Impulsive Buy was, along with myriad North American fast food consumers on social media, one of the earliest to break the news, with an amendment to their review of the sandwich added by its writer not long after his first post-publishing bowel movement.

Marvo, the author of the review, amended his original post on The Impulsive Buy with an edit, stating that the unique ingredient composition of the black bun “might turn your poop green,” before going on to say, “I’ve experienced this. Others in my household have experienced this. Commenters have experienced it. I apologize for the grossness of this, but I needed to mention it in case someone out there is on a toilet and freaking out because their poop is green.”

Marvo, in a sentiment shared by Burger King supporters online, found this side effect to be rather amusing, conceding in the post that “green poop does fit in with the Halloween theme.”

Burger King has readily assured all those frightened by the surprise that the colour change is simply cosmetic and that the food dyes that went into the bun—the obvious cause of the dyed poop—are all FDA approved and safe for consumption.

A relatively modest success in Japan, the main draw of the spooky sandwich is the abundance of the A.1. thick and hearty steak sauce baked into the bun and on the quarter-pound patty itself. A.1. steak sauce flavouring replaces the bamboo charcoal that made the bun black in Japan, which, according to Burger King North America’s cmo Eric Hirschhorn, is a change they made in an attempt to appeal to the wildly different tastes of those in North America, where Kraft manufactures their A.1. brand of steak sauce.

“We tailored the flavor of the black bun to the American palate with A.1. sauce, a flavor this country loves, and we’re delivering it in a way that’s never been done before by baking it into the bun,” read a statement from Hirschhorn on behalf of the fast food chain. “It may look Japanese, but it tastes like America.”