The Tomato Bun Is a Gesture I Respect

Week by week I get slightly fatter, because running is genuinely awful and gyms are a specific kind of hell, so I pay what I generously describe as theoretical attention to carbohydrates. Theoretical, because actual attention would involve not ordering the BBQ bacon burger—and there’s no version of that story where anyone comes out looking reasonable.

Japanese chain Mos Burger released something called the Tomami Burger—a portmanteau of tomato and the word for fruit—where the bun is replaced entirely by two thick slices of tomato. About six euros, allegedly healthy, the kind of lateral thinking that earns a food company roughly forty seconds of genuine respect before you order the fries anyway.

The real-world version looks considerably less composed than the product photography, because of course it does—that’s a law of physics, not a failure of ambition. But the logic is sound. If you’re going to eat a burger while maintaining the fiction of responsible eating, swapping the bun for a vegetable is at least an honest acknowledgment of the contradiction. It doesn’t solve anything. You’re still eating a burger. You’re just eating it with a tomato, which counts for something. Probably nothing. But something. I’ve been unable to stop thinking about cheeseburgers ever since.