Food critics, mom’s, physicians and personal trainers are cringing at the thought of this new ‘sandwich’ Kentucky Fried Chicken is positioning to consumers. The Double Down is a one-of-a-kind sandwich that features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce. So meaty, there is no room for a bun.

While we’re all aware of bacon’ new found popularity, and the purported ability of free will,  this new KFC menu item has got peoples’ stomachs turning.

Since the news spread, a heavy influx of conversations have sprouted up all around the interwebs. Most topics maintained high relations to the sandwich itself, but as some time passed, much of the chatter looked to target & revolve around the KFC brand specifically.

Overall sentiment shows a fairly level playing field with both negative and positive remarks claiming about half of the references. This is interesting as most people are basing these decisions entirely without ever having sampled the new treat.

Here’s a word cloud showing more popular terms associated with related posts. From this we can tell that people like the fact that the new sandwich includes bacon and that a heart attack as a direct result of eating this sandwich is not so bad.

Over the past week, Double Down has appeared as a trending topic on Twitter. This being said, it’s no surprise that it reported the highest amount of related activity. And, as more talk about the sandwich continue to engulf the internet, food bloggers & critics everywhere will have no choice but to succumb reader demands and scarf one of these babies down (then write about it). So, I’m sure we can expect to see blog coverage increase.

In the mean time, its rounding in on that lunch hour. What to eat, what to eat….

With same-store sales down 7% in the U.S. during the most recent quarter, KFC is attempting to transform itself into KGC.

KFC has been a trending topic on Twitter most of the week thanks to coupons announced on The Oprah Winfrey show on Tuesday, May 5 for two pieces of chicken, two sides and a biscuit. The coupons could be downloaded at UnThinkKFC.com until the end of May 6.

KFC then announced on May 7 that due to “overwhelming response” it can no longer accept the free coupon, but will introduce a rain check program to take care of inconvenienced customers.

KFC’s promotion quickly turned into an exercise in crisis management as long lines and angry customers shared their experiences online. Overall online chatter around KFC has been generally positive following the announcement.

Though the positive chatter has trended slightly down over the past two days while negative chatter has trended up.

This giveaway is KFC’s second national giveaway in the last two weeks. The chain declared Monday, April 27 “UNFry Day” and gave away 4 million pieces of chicken. In addition to a full-page ad in USA Today, KFC also unveiled a new ad campaign with a TV spot produced by Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris containing endorsements from celebrated chefs Sandra Lee, editor-in-chief of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Magazine, and TV One’s G. Garvin. Despite all of these tactics, the Oprah promotion generated considerably higher chatter for KFC than UNFry day. So marketers take note — free food isn’t exciting enough to talk about unless Oprah is involved.

As a point of reference, we compared KFC chatter to McDonald’s, the fast food chain typically generating the largest amount of chatter online. KFC spiked past McDonald’s during both promotions. But can KFC sustain chatter in the long term? Will customers like the grilled chicken enough to go back and keep talking about it when they have to pay for it?