It says, “we use nothing other than 100% beef with zero additives and fillers. All that we add? A small pinch of salt and pepper for taste.”
Is this possible? Is cooking this easy? Or is there a legal loophole they’re making use of? I’m very wary of food terminology after learning Snapple’s apple juice “drink” doesn’t contain apple juice, and this is allowed because it’s a “juice drink”, not “juice” http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/42968
I believe that, yes, they do use 100% beef. It is pretty common for fast food meat to be low quality dairy cow and bull meat, mixed with excess fat off of higher quality cattle.
Why would they? Additives cost money. I doubt they use “a little” salt, I think they probably add more than is healthy. However, the burgers don’t have to look good because you don’t see them till after you’ve bought it, and I’m given to undertstand that the turnaround of product is quick enough that they don’t need longer shelf life. Why would they spend the extra money?
This is a total guess for GQ but by using meat from dairy cattle that are fed for milk production; you may be tasting beef the way it tasted before they started using corn in the feedlots
Put it this way: if it weren’t true, it’d be an exceptionally foolish thing for McDonald’s to be putting in their ads, as the truth would come out, sooner or later, and create a PR nightmare (and probably lawsuits, as well). Lying about this simply wouldn’t be worth it, especially for a company which is pretty sensitive to how it handles its public image.
It should taste even better, honestly. Listen, I actually enjoy McDonald’s, but get some good freshly ground choice or better boneless short ribs (and/or chuck) and fry them up with salt and pepper, and that’s a great burger right there. You don’t need anything to make a delicious burger other than good beef, salt, and pepper.
Well, if we’re going to get technical here, the ad makes this claim for ONLY the “Quarter Pounder With Cheese”.
Which means they can sell you some other burger made out of possum meat and newspaper shreds. Not that I’m saying they actually do that, but they could. Maybe somewhere else they make a more general claim like “all our burger are 100% beef with no fillers”, in which case you could feel a bit more secure.
I used to work for one of McDonald’s competitors, and our small and quarter-pound hamburger patties came in boxes with an ingredients list that read “beef, salt”. We also had a sirloin patty which had some spices and bouillon mixed into it, but was otherwise still all beef.
I can’t imagine that McDonald’s does things that much differently than my former employer did - beef IS relatively cheap, and most of the burgers tend to be loss leaders anyway for the soft drinks and fries which have a much better profit margin.
I’m not sure this is true. I think if it’s called a “burger” it has to contain a certain percentage of beef. IIRC, DQ had to change the name of one of their burgers, due to the high soy content, to Hunger Buster years ago.
That’s the real argument right there; generally speaking, adding additives and fillers both costs money to devise the additives, figure out how to add them, and then it incurs a cost every time you add the additive to the food.
Plus, agricultural commodity items like bread, ground beef, potatoes, etc… are about the cheapest things that you can buy; adding anything to them other than other commodity items such as salt would almost certainly raise the price.
The only reason I can see for a huge chain like McDonalds to use additives would be if there was a serious consistency or shelf life issue to some ingredients that the cost of adding an additive would offset the lost sales or wastage.
Why would you need preservatives for frozen beef, unless you’d be storing it for years and might need something to prevent oxidation. Where I think they could use a little chemical assistance is with the fish, which tastes “off,” i.e. fishy or rancid, about 1 out of 3 times I eat one. (That period of time covers about a year.)
So as a side question: Is the trans fat found in fast food meat naturally-occuring trans fat? If, in fact, there’s partially hydrogenating unsaturated fats added, would that disqualify their “zero additive or filler” claim? Why would this meat have trans fat if nothing is added? (Unless this is naturally-occuring trans fat, hence my question).
Most folks (including many of you in this thread) assume that McDonalds burgers are cheap because they use low quality meat. Their costs savings really come from volume: they’re the largest purchaser of beef in the country – something like 500 million pounds a year. The biggest reason why the McDonalds’ burger doesn’t taste as good as one you can make fresh at home (IMHO) is because their patties are frozen.
They use only only forequarter and flank cuts. Almost all of the burgers sold in the US come from from cattle corn-fed in the U.S. The McDonald’s site has a video that shows how they make the burger patties.
