Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

So there I was, minding my own business and poking around MediaPost, when I came across this Todd Wasserman piece about Kim Kardashian’s new gig as Chief Taste Consultant for Beyond Meat, which produces plant-based meatlike substances.

Kim And The Untasted Burger

Kim Kardashian is Beyond Meat’s new Chief Taste Consultant, but her ad for Beyond Meat is being mocked by some because she is supposedly “fake chewing.”

The ad, via Mythology, features Kardashian (in uncharacteristically blonde locks), saying that she believes in Beyond Meat so much that she stepped in to help with her greatest asset, which viewers at home might not know is her taste.

All is well until you notice what some have pointed out on social media, which is that Kardashian is never seen actually tasting the product.

Fake chewing, Doc? That’s hard to swallow.

– Just Trying to Keep Up

Dear JTTKU,

Let’s look at how MastiGate has played out.

First, here’s the spot.

The media mastication started last week with this TechCrunch tweet.

Two days later, Yahoo! Entertainment noted that Kardashian was being “mocked for how she eats a burger.”

Kim Kardashian is getting heat for seemingly pretending to eat food in a new ad campaign for Beyond Meat. The company’s new ‘chief taste consultant’ has fans criticizing her commercial, where she appears to not actually taste or take a bite of the plant-based food she’s promoting.

The next day Wasserman’s MediaPost piece detailed reaction in the Twitterverse.

On Twitter, Katy Wellhousen, vice president, social account director for Deutsch LA, criticized the ad. “kim kardashian fake-chewing a beyond meat burger that has no bite taken out of it is making me spiral,” tweeted Wellhousen, who works on the Taco Bell account for Deutsch.

Wellhousen wasn’t the only one. Seth Arp, a musician, tweeted, “@KimKardashian saying ‘mm’ to eating a beyond meat burger but there’s no bite taken out. Her reaction is as fake as that food they want to call ‘meat.’”

The Vegan Review’s Alice Soule promptly piled on.

[In] this advert, Kim Kardashian claims to believe so strongly in the Beyond Meat brand that she’s offering them her best asset – her taste.  But then the video cuts to her seemingly eating a mouthful of food while holding a burger that somehow seems to have no bite mark. She then comments on how amazingly delicious the Beyond Meat products are while fist-bumping the chefs and taking a few more selfies. Not once in the advert do you see Kim Kardashian eating a mouthful of the Beyond Meat products.

But then, as Shireen Khalil reported in The Daily Telegraph, Kardashian bit back.

Kim has since shared a behind-the-scenes clip to her Instagram Stories proving she ate the burger despite being accused of “fake” chewing in the 30-second ad.

“Guys, come on…,” she captioned the clip which showed her removing the top bun from a vegan burger.

“Getting rid of some of the carbs,” she explained to someone on the set.

The Doc is not on this earth long enough to document all the ins and outs of Kim’s Beyond Meat rumpus, but help yourself if you’re so inclined.

One footnote to Todd Wasserman’s MediaPost piece is this comment attached to it.

Artie White from Zoom Media Corp, May 31, 2022 at 9:10 a.m.