Fast-food ick

Creepy beef and sneaky ads

By Culinate staff

January 4, 2012

Sure, all that holiday food you just snarfed was probably homemade, right? So you don’t really need the latest round of reminders that fast food is despicable, including BuzzFeed’s hilarious photo essay about Taco Bell's beef and Grist’s lambasting of McDonald's latest attempt at “farmwashing.”

If the ingredients in those beef tacos don’t turn your stomach, maybe the ingredients in those Mickey D’s fries will: “Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives], citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.”

On the plus side, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King recently announced that they would no longer use ammonia-treated beef, a product developed to kill pathogens but commonly derided as “pink slime.”