What's the etymology of the word "Nothing-burger"?

All Four Feet and a Snout in the Trough: 200 Alleged Ethics Violations by Reagan Administration Appointees (1987) includes this description of sometime U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford:

Charged with agency mismanagement, political manipulation and possible conflict of interest. Allegedly made decisions based on political considerations; for example, cleanups of hazardous waste sites were either sped up or delayed to help Republicans in the 1982 elections. In addition, she knew for a year of the damaging evidence against her friend and influential aide, James Sanderson, yet failed to fire him or take any other action against him. Under her auspices, EPA kept lists of the political leanings of agency employees. Mrs. Burford resigned. Later, when appointed Chairwoman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere she described her job and the Committee as "a nothing burger" and "a joke." Mrs. Burford resigned the day before she was to be sworn in.

Burford seems to have uttered her famous remark in early August 1984. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress (1984) includes a commentary on the novel term:

THE DEFINITION OF A "NOTHINGBURGER"

(Mr. [Edward] MARKEY [Democratic representative from Massachusetts] asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, many people wondered what Anne Burford meant when she called the National Advisory Committee she has been appointed to chair a "nothingburger." It is time to define this new, unfamiliar term.

My idea of a nothingburger is James Watt as chief protector of the environment. It is Rita Lavelle and her campaign to play politics with the Superfund cleanup effort. Yes, a nothingburger is the appointment of a former counsel to a forestry company as head of the National Forest Service. It is the horrible mismanagement by Anne Burford of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In sum, it the Reagan environmental policy that is the nothingburger: a policy of malign neglect, a policy of private profiteering at public expense a policy of contempt for the environment and the future of our children.

Another fairly early occurrence is in the remarks of Mr. Bartlett, a Republican representative from Texas, in Congressional Record (October 7, 1990):

What we should do is turn this [budget] down, take a few days with a short-term CR with $40 billion in agreed-to cuts, ask our leadership to get together and demonstrate some leadership and responsibility.

I have two teenagers who have a word for what we are doing here tonight. The word is "nothing-burger."

It is not at all clear, however, that the term originated as youth slang, although it's not impossible that Ms. Burford got it from her son, Neil, who was almost 17 when she made the word famous.

J.E. Lighter, Random House Dictionary of American Slang (1997) has this entry for the term:

nothingburger n. something that is insignificant or worthless. Cf. NUTBURGER ["a lunatic; NUT"]; -BURGER ["used as a facetious noun ending to characterize some condition attribute, etc."; cited examples include cheerfulburger from 1986 and psychoburger from 1989]. 1984 U.S. News and World Report (Aug. 13): Burford herself spread the jitters to Reagan's closest aides when she termed her job... "a joke" and "a nothingburger."

The starting point is once again Anne Gorsuch Burford. But as a New York Times Magazine article from 1984 observes, Burford's inspiration may have been another catchphrase with a political edge:

"It's a nothingburger," Anne McGill Burford, late of the Environmental Protection Agency, said of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere shortly before withdrawing from her appointment as its chairman. She may have been remembering Walter Mondale's success with the Burger King tag line — "Where's the beef?" — in his primary struggles with Senator Gary Hart. But the effect was quite the opposite. In fact, the reaction to her remark may have helped force her decision to withdraw, which Representative James H. Scheuer, a New York Democrat, hailed with a fine example of diasrym (backhanded compliment): "She has done more for the environment today than during her entire tenure at E.P.A."

The "where's the beef?" connection seems strong, since a hamburger with no hamburger meat in it is (to some people, anyway) the essence of a nothingburger. The New York Times Magazine is quite mistaken about the Burger King connection, however; the source of the famous "Where's the Beef?" advertisement was Wendy's, a rival fast-food chain. Walter Mondale appropriated the line to imply that Gary Hart (another candidate for the 1984 Democratic Party nomination for president) was all talk and no substance, so that expression was certainly on every politically attuned person's mind in the summer of 1984.

Update (11/11/2017): Two instances of 'nothingburger' from the 1960s

I've just discovered that I did some relevant research months ago in preparation for posting an EL&U question about the origin of nothingburger that I never got around to posting. And in the course of doing that research, I found two very early examples of nothingburger—one from 1963 and the other from 1964—that antedate Anne Burford's instance by two full decades.

The first is from Richard Sale, The Oscar (1963) [combined snippets]:

"...We were knocking on the studio doors all that time, and we were coming up empty. Finally, I came up real empty. Sure, movies were better than ever in those days, except that the bottom had fallen out of the market. That old devil TV had swallowed the audience, and times were tough. Some of you guys and gals remember when the lean days started? That's when I started. I didn't belong to the SAG, and so help me God, I couldn't even get into the Screen Extras Guild! In other words, I was a nothingburger, and flat broke."

And the second is from Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office (1964), which uses the term twice:

Don't be afraid to throw out nearly all the jewelry you own and stick with a few things that are great. This gets to be a particularly good idea when you're over thirty-five. Wearing one great pin four days in a row is better than changing to nothing-burger clinkers. If a particular color of jewelry isn't becoming—even something as basic as silver, gold or rhinestones—rule it out.

...

Perhaps you worry that men in offices always go straight for the beautiful sexpot. Naturally they go for her. What man wants his manhood impugned? But frequently they also go for some little nothingburger who looks to you like something even flu germs wouldn't care to hang around.

My earlier research also turned up this interesting note in Robert Chapman & Barbara Ann Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, third edition (1995) about the practice of attaching -burger to other words for descriptive or comic effect:

-burger combining word 1930s A sandwich made with cooked portions of what is indicated: beefburger/ cheeseburger/ snakeburger {The definition does not apply to hamburger, the source of the term. The suffix was probably first used by the comic-strip artist E.C. Segar ["Thimble Theatre," "Sappo," and "Popeye"], who coined goonburger in the middle 1930s}

So the claim that Anne Gorsuch Burford originated the term seems to be ill founded. I still think that her use of nothingburger in 1984 propelled the slang term into mainstream usage—and she may even have hit upon it independently of those who had used it 20 and 21 years earlier. But it is also possible that she may have learned it in a less creative way—by reading Helen Gurley Brown.