George: From calorie count to portion sizes,
we wanted to find out all the differences
between Burger King in Japan and the US.
This is "Food Wars."
Here's everything you can find on the menu
at the Burger King in Japan but not in the US.
Here's everything you can find at a US Burger King
you cannot get in Japan.
All right, so let's start with exclusive burgers.
So, here we have teriyaki lettuce burger
and teriyaki Whopper.
Ooh!
Huge.
Next we have avocado salad burger
and avocado Whopper.
Aah, a little cute baby.
Look at this.
And Whopper.
It's totally different.
This one is so huge.
And avocados, tomato,
no tomatoes.
I don't know why.
Next we have quattro cheese Whopper.
Oh, big boy.
We've got smoky barbecue Whopper
and smoky barbecue Whopper junior.
And here is spicy Whopper.
Ooh!
It's hot sauce.
Next, we have tartar chicken burger.
Ooh, it's got
a lot of tartar sauce,
chicken, crispy.
Burger King in Japan just released a brand-new burger
called Guilty Burger.
It's basically butter burger.
Why?
What have you done?
Let's check out this Guilty butter beef burger first.
The bun is different.
Itadakimasu!
Just a little bit of butter flavor,
but I don't feel as guilty as it claims.
This one is Guilty butter croquette sandwich.
Ooh.
Guilty!
And here is Guilty butter chicken burger.
First one is something that BK has exclu --
oh, my God.
This is called the Texas Whopper.
Look at the size of this f---ing thing.
Two patties, cheese, bacon, bunch of veggies.
Wait for it!
The triple Whopper.
Look at the size of this thing.
The weight of it has completely flattened the bottom bun.
And there's nothing between the patties of meat!
What the hell are you guys doing over there?
Next.
Oh, the Bacon King.
Oh, my God.
Looks to be pretty bacon centric.
Looks like a double Whopper with cheese,
bacon, mayo, ketchup, mustard.
They didn't mess with the veggies. Thank you.
You're not fooling anyone
getting lettuce and onion on that one.
The rodeo burger is a little guy with onion rings.
The rodeo burger. Yeehaw.
On to the chicken.
I'll just put this over here.
Japan does not have
what we call the original chicken sandwich.
And I don't know why Burger King,
maybe just to set itself apart,
the chicken sandwich is this, like, sub shape.
It's like I'm holding the phone.
This is great.
Chicken junior, spicy chicken junior.
Let's go spicy.
Barely registers in the spice meter.
Wait!
Yeah.
BKs in the US have something called the Ch'King sandwich.
You can get the sandwich regular or deluxe.
You can also get the sandwich flavor regular or spicy.
So here is the regular regular.
And as you can see,
just comes with sauce and pickles and the chicken.
You can get it deluxe and spicy,
so we went with deluxe, comes with all these veggies
that you brush off right when you start eating it,
and it has got a spicy kind of hue to the chicken there.
Here's our side menu.
Let's start with this one.
We've got hot dog.
It's got such a big sausage.
This one is chili beans hot dog.
And next we have this little guy,
snack chicken.
And last we have this one,
chili cheese fries.
And if you want some veggies, you can order Caesar salad.
But my bad, I forgot to order.
Also exclusives to the US are these, chicken fries.
As you can tell, they look like fries,
but they're pieces of chicken.
Not bad.
You can get Mott's applesauce.
Jalapeño cheddar bites.
I've never heard of these.
And now I know why.
Burger King in the US has two iced-coffee flavors,
mocha and vanilla.
Assuming that's the mocha.
Tastes exactly like chocolate milk.
Blech! No.
Oh, the aftertaste is horrible.
What the hell?
That's ridiculous how bad that is.
And the vanilla.
That is so sweet.
I'm gonna keep this one.
So, here is our dessert menus.
Here we have coffee float.
A little bit melting, sorry.
And we have melon soda float.
Coke float and Coke Zero float.
And here we've got premium sundae chocolate and coffee.
And here is our chocolate sundae
and strawberry sundae.
And my favorite is this apple pie.
Desserts.
Here in the US you can get yourself a Hershey's sundae pie.
Ugh.
This one might have got a little roughed up in transit.
And in the US Burger King, you can also get various shakes.
Here we have Oreo shake, a chocolate Oreo shake,
a chocolate shake, and a vanilla shake.
All right.
God, that's so good.
The straight-up chocolate.
Oh, man, this is trouble.
Mm!
Wow, Burger King's shakes are really good.
I'm assuming this is just the straight Oreo one.
Oh, my God, this is fantastic.
Are we all curious what a chocolate Oreo shake tastes like?
Wonder no more.
Good. This one's the best.
Also at a US Burger King, you can get a soft-serve cone.
I didn't get it,
only because we have no refrigeration unit here
and it would just be a cone with a puddle of ice cream. So.
Victoria, please turn me into a giant soft-serve cone.
So, here are our drinks.
Let's start with this one.
This one is ginger ale;
and Fanta melon;
oolong tea,
which is Chinese tea;
and orange juice.
And this one is Earl Grey iced tea.
Next we have Darjeeling tea.
And here is Calpis,
which, you guys call it Calpico in your country.
But in Japan we say "ka-ru pi-su."
I know it sounds like "cow piss" in English,
but if you say Calpico to Japanese people,
they will never understand what you're talking about.
So in Japan, once again, we say "ka-ru pi-su."
Repeat after me. "Ka-ru pi-su."
Very good!
First things you can get,
you can get a little orange juice guy,
and you can also get Capri Sun apple juice.
Shout-out to the pouch.
Burger King in the US has Coke products as well,
but we have something called a Coke Freestyle machine.
If you haven't seen it, it's this big machine
that has a bunch of Coca-Cola-related beverages.
You can mix and match them.
Anyway, we can get Hi-C fruit punch,
Hi-C pink lemonade, Fanta orange, Mello Yello,
Powerade Zero, Dr Pepper, Barq's, diet Barq's.
You can also get yourself a fat-free milk.
There it is.
Sweetened or unsweetened tea.
I think I got the sweetened.
I don't want any tea. Tea sucks.
We also have something called frozen Cokes.
That is this right here.
As you can see, it's been sitting for a while,
it's starting to separate.
But we have frozen Coke,
we also have a frozen Fanta wild cherry,
a frozen Fanta blue raspberry,
and a frozen strawberry lemonade.
Mm.
Oh, yeah.
Japan has a few exclusives that are similar
but different to that in the US.
So, for example, this is our plant-based Whopper.
This burger is made from 100% soybeans.
Itadakimasu!
It's actually delicious.
I like it.
Mm.
When it comes to vegetarianism and veganism,
they are not that popular in Japan.
But gradually, especially the restaurants in Tokyo
are offering more vegan or vegetarian meals
because there is more Japanese people
and non-Japanese people who are vegan or vegetarian
compared to other places in Japan.
But overall, the vegan or vegetarian option
is still limited in Japan.
And in the US, we have the Impossible Whopper.
What's the difference?
Well, the Impossible burger has all these ingredients.
So as you can see, a lot more.
I am curious.
That looks like meat, right?
Tastes exactly like a Whopper.
I don't think I would notice the difference.
They're covering the lack of meat with, like,
with that char flavor that they have on there.
Oh, it's good.
In Japan, we call this burger
crispy chicken burger.
And in the US, we have the before-mentioned
Ch'King sandwich,
which comes in varieties of spicy and/or deluxe.
For breakfast, our hash brown comes in one big piece.
Whereas in the US,
our hash browns come in little bites.
And in Japan, we have this cheese bites.
Look at this.
And in the US, we have eight-piece cheesy tots.
And on to the US breakfast exclusives.
As you can see, we have a lot more going on
in our breakfast menu here in the US than Japan has.
Here in the US, you can get your breakfast sandwich
in biscuit or Croissan'wich options.
Croissan'wich is, of course, a croissant sandwich.
Took those two words, put them together. Croissan'wich.
So we have bacon, egg, and cheese;
ham, egg, and cheese;
and sausage, egg, and cheese.
We have two breakfast burritos.
The Egg-Normous breakfast burrito,
which I'm assuming is this one,
'cause it is enormous.
The breakfast burrito junior.
Look at this little guy!
French toast sticks.
Who doesn't like French toast?
Finally, pancake platter with just three pancakes
or a pancake platter with three pancakes
and a side of sausage.
The fries at Burger King in Japan come in three sizes,
small,
medium,
and large.
Fries in the US at Burger King come in four sizes,
value, small, medium, or large.
Or maybe it's value, small, medium, large.
Does this look right?
Any of you "Food Wars" heads
would've seen the Burger King US vs UK episode
where we uncovered Frygate.
Two sizes had pretty much the exact same unit of fries.
Now, as you can see from these,
I can't tell which is the value and the small.
I'm assuming this is the medium.
Well, unfortunately, we cannot do that amazingly accurate
scientific test that we did in the last episode
because the fries have been compromised.
They all came in the same bag, and ...
I think they knew what we were up to
and they purposely dumped all the fries in the same bag
to contaminate the experiment.
You've outsmarted us this time.
George: Let's weigh the large fries
to see how much you actually get.
151 grams.
What if we did a thing where, like,
whatever lands and stays on counts as it?
Does that seem like a fair thing to say?
That's really smart, what I just did there, I think.
It's 195 grams.
Let's weigh Japan's Whopper.
250 grams.
Joe: And let us weigh our Whopper in the US.
Yo!
270?
Yeah, 270 grams.
So pretty close. Surprisingly close.
If you're not feeling like having beef,
Burger King also has some chicken options.
You can order your chicken nuggets
in five pieces and eight pieces.
Here in the US, you can get your nuggets in sizes
of four pieces, eight pieces, or 16 pieces.
And it's worth noting that you can only get the 16-piece
online or through their app, and even if you do,
they still just give you two eight-pieces.
I don't know why either.
So, let's weigh eight-piece nuggets.
130 grams.
Divide by eight equals
16.25 grams per nugget.
I don't know if we can get as accurate of a measurement
for something so small.
So we will use this guy instead.
So I'll just do this and put this scale here.
Ah!
This is a bad idea.
Eight pieces is 104 grams,
divided by eight is 13 grams.
In Japan, we have three drink sizes,
small
and medium
and large.
In the US, we have four drink sizes.
Value, which only comes with a value meal;
small; medium; and large.
Now, I want to note that the US's largest drink size
is 112% larger than Japan's largest drink.
Now, what's the biggest meal
you can get in Japan's Burger King?
Over here, it's the King Meal.
[singing "Circle of Life"]
The King Meal ranges anywhere
from 790 to 990 yen
depending on the burger you choose.
It has your choice of an avocado Whopper,
double cheeseburger, or Whopper.
We chose the double cheeseburger,
which comes with small fries,
five-piece nuggets,
medium Coke, and apple pie.
And in the US, currently our single biggest menu item
at a Burger King is the $30 Ultimate Party Bundle.
Now, you could only order this party bundle
through the BK app, and it includes two Whoppers,
two double cheeseburgers,
two original chicken sandwiches,
two eight-piece chicken nuggets,
four small fries, and four small drinks.
And it costs:
$30.
In Japan, a Whopper cheese set,
it costs around 890 yen, or $7.80 US.
Whereas in the US, the same meal
with a small fry and drink is $9.29,
or 1,059.65 Japanese yen.
What about the medium?
You get that with the medium fry and medium drink,
it's $10.29,
or 1,173.71 Japanese yen.
What about the large?
Poof! Hey, there it is, right in front of me.
Large fries and drink, $11.29,
or 1,287.78 Japanese yen.
Let's look at calories.
In Japan, a Whopper is 676 calories.
The calories aren't too bad,
but watch out for the sodium levels.
One Japan Whopper is 113%
of your daily recommended amount of sodium.
Too much!
In the US, our Whopper is 667 calories.
Both Whoppers are pretty comparable
in most of the categories,
but there's one statistic that really stands out,
the salt content.
The sodium level in Japan's Whopper is 122% higher
than that in the US.
Let's make that a meal.
A Whopper with large fries and a large Coke
is 1,323 calories.
And the same meal in the US is 1,680 calories,
so a lot more.
Now, a big portion of the calories
actually come from the large Coke.
The US's is roughly 182% more calories
than that of Japan's.
Let's look at the highest-calorie sandwich
at Japan's Burger King.
The double Whopper cheese is here.
Eating one of these is already half of your daily calories
and a little over your daily recommended protein.
The main thing to watch out for here is the sodium,
which is 152% of your daily recommended value.
Whereas in the US, our highest-calorie sandwich
is the spicy chicken deluxe sandwich, seen here.
If you're worried about your health,
steer clear of this one.
The fat content is 190% your daily allowance,
and the sodium is over 200% of your daily allowance.
Yikes.
As I mentioned earlier,
the biggest menu item is the King Meal.
If you get it with a double bacon cheeseburger,
the total calories are 1,329.
That's 66% of your daily calories.
And, of course, the $30 Ultimate Party Bundle,
which is 8,903 calories,
or 445% your daily
caloric allowance.
Burger King in Japan doesn't disclose
the exact ingredients,
but it does disclose where the ingredients come from
and where they're finished processing.
For example, the Whopper beef patties
are sourced from Australia, New Zealand, and Europe,
but they are processed in Australia,
Japan, and Austria.
Burger King in the US is pretty vague
when it comes to its ingredients.
They don't disclose a comprehensive list anywhere.
At the end of 2020,
Burger King permanently banned 120 artificial flavors
from their menu, including aluminum,
yellows 1 through 5, BHA, and BHT.
Here's the complete list.
It was actually a lot of stuff.
Good for you guys.
Ow!
Naotomo: Simba!
Simba!