Hardee’s Tries a Lean, Mean Campaign : Fast food: Besides touting its low-fat burger entry, it suggests McDonald’s version be called a seaweed pie.

RALEIGH, N.C. —  When Hardee’s announced a low-fat hamburger, along with an advertising campaign, they implied there’s something fishy in the McDonald’s lean entry.

The fast-food chain recently unwrapped its “Real Lean Deluxe,” and the accompanying media campaign poured hot grease on a McDonald’s hamburger that uses a seaweed filler called carageenan to help hold the burger together.

“If they want to call it a seaweed pie, a carageenan custard, they can call it anything they want,” said John Merritt, vice president for public relations, in a telephone interview from Hardee’s headquarters in Rocky Mount. “They can’t call it a hamburger.”

In the television commercial, an actor posing as a Hardee’s restaurant manager tells viewers that “we would never consider using fillers, flavor enhancers--seaweed.”

At McDonald’s Corp. headquarters in Chicago, spokeswoman Terri Capatosto said the McLean Deluxe contains 1% carageenan that’s used to maintain moisture. She said the seaweed derivative, a gum that acts as a binder, is commonly used in many brand-name items such as toothpaste.

While she hasn’t seen the Hardee’s commercial, Capatosto said, she did have problems with its claims.

“It would look like the ad contains misinformation,” Capatosto said. “None of our burgers have fillers, extenders and flavor enhancers.”

This is the second stab Hardee’s has made at producing a low-fat burger. The chain introduced one last June, but the product was pulled from the market and reformulated due to poor customer response, said Bobbi Booth, a spokeswoman in Merritt’s office.

The new burger was test-marketed in Tulsa, Okla., and Minneapolis in April, she said.

McDonald’s does seem to have a slight edge in nutritional content. Its McLean Deluxe has 320 calories and 10.2 grams of fat, vs. 345 calories and 13.6 grams of fat for the Real Lean Deluxe.

“Taste is the issue,” Merritt said. “In an internal taste test, we beat McDonald’s 2 to 1. We not only beat the McLean. We also beat the Big Mac.”

Hardee’s also said its burger did better in a blind taste test in May at the University of Maryland. Of the 90 students asked to rate the burgers on a scale of 1 to 7, 17 gave the Real Lean a 6 or 7, while the McLean Deluxe weighed in third behind the McDonald’s quarter pounder, Hardee’s said.