# McDonalds Hamburgers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [May 5, 2003, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224 "2003-05-05T17:43:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aus55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@aus55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aus55)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/1 "2003-05-05T17:43:53Z")
Dear Cecil, [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1\_186.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_186.html) I was under the impression that McDonalds Burgers were not 100% beef, but that they had a large amount of filler, specifically soy, in their burgers. If this is true, wouldn’t that drastically alter the number of innocent, and yet still tasty, cows that are slaughtered for McDonald’s each year? Curiously, Roy Sullivan ---
**Author:** ![SandWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8491ac/32.png) [@SandWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandWriter)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/2 "2003-05-05T18:00:01Z")
Well not that Cecil needs me to come to his defense, but if you look here [http://www.mcdonalds.com/countries/usa/food/nutrition/categories/ingredients/index.html](http://www.mcdonalds.com/countries/usa/food/nutrition/categories/ingredients/index.html) you’ll see that a “beef patty” is 100% meat, no fillers, etc. Now that information does come from McD’s web page, so the data may need to be verified by an un-interested 3rd party, but it seems McD’s would be leaving themselves wide open for lawsuits and such if the page lied. ---
**Author:** ![Nightshade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/41988e/32.png) [@Nightshade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightshade)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/3 "2003-05-05T19:20:55Z")
A minor nitpicking note: The “average” cow which is butchered and sent to McDonalds is actually a dairy cow. This does change the numbers slightly. The average dairy cow weighs about 900-1000 lbs, lighter than beef cows. Dairy cows do NOT make good eating, as they have little fat – all that fat goes into the milk. Thus, when slaughtered, practically 100% of the edible meat (500-600 lbs) goes straight to McDonalds, who do not care too much about the fat content (and tenderness) of their patties. This knocks back the total number of cows slaughtered to 1.7 million. Another interesting note: the average dairy cow in California lives about 7 years before going to the great Golden Arches in the sky. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/4 "2003-05-05T19:26:37Z")
Let’s all sing along: _“Two **all beef patties,** special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.”_ Just from eating them - I can tell they’re all cow. Burger King also seems to be 100% bovine. The only claim I could readily find for them is “fire-grilled beef.” It’s the smaller brands that scare me. [Jollibee](http://www.jollibee.com.ph/default.htm) (Phillipines-based, but making some inraods in the US) tastes like they take about 50% meat and the rest is bread crumbs and onion soup mix. I tried them when they opened up near my office and was urping up the flavor all afternoon. Just nasty. ---
**Author:** ![Xgemina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/b5e925/32.png) [@Xgemina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xgemina)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/5 "2003-05-05T22:55:44Z")
**Nightshade** > [@](#): > > The “average” cow which is butchered and sent to McDonalds is actually a dairy cow. Have you got a cite for this? While it is true that some of McDonald’s burger beef does come from spent dairy cows it is a very small amount. I doubt that there are enough spent dairy cows to be able to supply all of the beef McDonalds needs or even to be the “average.” That being said, what’s wrong with eating a dairy cow that no longer produces? If you read any McDonald’s literature you will see that proclaim the use of “lean” beef. Obviously meat from a dairy cow would be lean. ---
**Author:** ![bstewart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@bstewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bstewart)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/6 "2003-05-05T23:55:00Z")
You divide by 100, as if the other 600 to 700 lbs of edible beef per animal is thrown away. This doesn’t seem like a reasonable assumption. The numbers are fantastic enough without resorting to congressional mathematical techniques. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2003, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/7 "2003-05-06T02:07:53Z")
> [@](#): > > Have you got a cite for this? If **Nightshade** doesn’t, I do. > [@](#): > > Back in the late 70s my husband put himself through college by working at a factory that produced hamburgers solely for McDonald’s. This was done by grinding together bovine flesh from two very different sources. The lean meat came from dairy cows who had outlived their ability to profitably produce milk. > > Since dairy cows aren’t fed the fattening-up diet beef steers get, their flesh is exceptionally lean, and thus exceptionally flavorless. To compensate, the workers added fat from beef steers (in chunks that were referred to around the factory as “plate”) during the grinding to achieve a fattier, tastier final product. Since these burgers contain more lean meat than fat, they can be said to contain more cow than steer. (If memory serves, the fat ratio they tried to maintain was 20 percent.) From [this webpage](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_097b.html). 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jezzaOZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@jezzaOZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jezzaOZ)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2003, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/8 "2003-05-06T11:55:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SandWriter \* > \*\*Well not that Cecil needs me to come to his defense, but if you look here [http://www.mcdonalds.com/countries/usa/food/nutrition/categories/ingredients/index.html](http://www.mcdonalds.com/countries/usa/food/nutrition/categories/ingredients/index.html) > you’ll see that a “beef patty” is 100% meat, no fillers, etc. > > Now that information does come from McD’s web page, so the data may need to be verified by an un-interested 3rd party, but it seems McD’s would be leaving themselves wide open for lawsuits and such if the page lied. \*\* Here in Oz, raise the meat protein content in sausages and pies by adding centrifuged blood plasma to it. You don’t suppose that 100% beef patty includes some percentage of beef plasma protein do you? ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2003, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/9 "2003-05-06T12:16:56Z")
Is it cheap to put blood in a centrifuge? Don’t you need a lab for that? We are talking about 1400 tons of beef a day. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2003, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/10 "2003-05-06T14:50:59Z")
**bstewart** , I think the other 600 to 700 lbs of edible beef on the cow do not go to hamburgers, but are sent for steaks, roasts, ribs, and other cuts of meat. Not every part of the cow goes into hamburger. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2003, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/11 "2003-05-06T17:43:50Z")
Remember when your local McDonalds had a #### served on its sign? They were counting individual burger patties, not the burgers themselves. In other words, they count a Big Mac twice. Is that 5.5 billion figure based on the tradition of counting patties or is it the burgers themselves? ---
**Author:** ![bstewart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/85f322/32.png) [@bstewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bstewart)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/12 "2003-05-07T00:32:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Irishman \* > \*\ ***bstewart** , I think the other 600 to 700 lbs of edible beef on the cow do not go to hamburgers, but are sent for steaks, roasts, ribs, and other cuts of meat. Not every part of the cow goes into hamburger. \*\* Yes, that is my point. Every 100 lbs of beef McDonalds uses is more like 1/7th of a cow. If McDonalds switched to a tasty blend of horse, kangaroo, and ostrich meat tomorrow, most of the 10 million cows Cecil calculates would still be slaughtered for those other uses. Therefore, a more reasonable guess is on the order of 1.7 million. Still a lot of cows… ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/13 "2003-05-07T08:04:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Here in Oz, raise the meat protein content in sausages and pies by adding centrifuged blood plasma to it. Unless Oz has some very strange abbatoirs I can’t see the sense in that. Blood is simply allowed to spill away through grates in the floor in modern abbatoirs for later use in fertiliser and stockfeed. Australia presumably has the standard first world hygeine laws when it comes to handling animal products. In order to use it as food filler the would need to be kept clean and separate from the faeces, hair and dirt that normally contaminates the waste chutes in abbatoirs. This would in turn require some serious changes to abbatoir construction. This becomes very expensive very fast. Way to expensive to warrant the use of the product as mere filler. Filler, almost by defintion, must be cheaper than meat or it would be more economical to simply use offcuts. When you add in the costs of centrifuging the blood as you described the cost of the plasma would probably be more than the coast of prime steak, certainly more than the cost of offcuts. The only time blood gets collected in appropriately hygeinic situations for human consumpton is when it is going to high value products such as blood sausage ,which is far more expensive than sausage meat and hence justifies the expensive. Have you got a cite for the use of blood in sausages and pies in Australia? ---
**Author:** ![Nightshade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/41988e/32.png) [@Nightshade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightshade)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/14 "2003-05-07T18:58:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kat \* > \*\*If **Nightshade** doesn’t, I do. > > From [this webpage](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_097b.html). > > 😃 \*\* Actually, I won’t cite the web, but just my personal experiences. I’m a veterinarian. During my tenure in school at U/C Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, we saw a LOT of dairy cows. Perhaps not as many as go into hamburger, but I was told by several food-animal vets as well as the occasional dairyman themselves that the cows were destined for McDonalds after their productive period. Is this a bad thing? Not really – it makes economic sense. The idea of fat being added to the meat post-slaughter I had NOT heard about, but it makes a huge amount of sense. I wonder if McDonalds gets charged for just the lean beef or beef plus fat, with a “combining” charge? ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2003, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/15 "2003-05-08T01:37:55Z")
**Nightshade** , the amusing thing about that cite is the fact that it’s another SD column. ---
**Author:** ![jezzaOZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@jezzaOZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jezzaOZ)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2003, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/16 "2003-05-08T13:35:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Blake \* > \*\*Have you got a cite for the use of blood in sausages and pies in Australia? \*\* From Chapter 2 of the joint Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code > [@](#): > > Meat type > Definition > > Meat The whole or part of the carcass of any buffalo, camel, cattle, deer, goat, hare, pig, poultry, rabbit or sheep, slaughtered other than in a wild state but does not include- > > a. the whole or part of the carcass of any other animal unless permitted for human consumption under a law of a State, Territory or New Zealand; or > > b. avian eggs, foetuses or part of foetuses. > > Meat Flesh The skeletal muscle of any slaughtered animal, and any attached - > > a. animal rind; and > b. fat; and > c. connective tissue; and > d. nerve; and > e. blood; and > f. blood vessels; and > g. skin, in the case of poultry. > > Offal > > Offal includes brain, heart, kidney, liver, tongue or tripe. The presence of these must be declared either by the class name ’ offal’ or the specific type of offal; for example steak and kidney pie. > > All other offal is prohibited unless the specific name of the offal is declared on the label or where food is not required to bear a label, is otherwise declared to the purchaser. > > Meat product > Minimum amount of meat > Additives Permitted > > Meat flesh 100% meat flesh as defined above > None > > Mince meat 100% meat as defined above > None > > Processed meat > Product containing at least 300g/kg meat that has been processed other than through boning, slicing, dicing, mincing or freezing. > > Manufactured meat > Must contain no less than 660g/kg of meat. > > A meat pie > Must contain a minimum of 250g/kg of meat; no maximum fat content is specified. > None in meat flesh or mince meat (note additives are permitted as a mixed food - see Standard 1.3.1) > > Sausage meat > Minimum of 500g/kg fat free meat flesh and proportion of fat must be no more than ½ of the fat free meat content. > > Cured/Dried meat > 160g/kg meat protein (fat free) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2003, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/17 "2003-05-08T22:51:55Z")
Except that’s just a cite for non-meat things being allowed in meat products. I see no mention made of blood, except for the “attached” blood and blood vessels, which I presume refers to the blood which was already in the tissues and not removed (in other words, the meat doesn’t need to be koshered). Definitely no mention of centrifuged blood plasma, or any blood being added to the meat. ---
**Author:** ![cdhostage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@cdhostage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cdhostage)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2003, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/18 "2003-05-09T02:52:32Z")
I wonder what would happen to the prices of American foods and a lot of the American economy if the government assistance to American farms was lifted - I do not know the numbers, but I’ve gotten the impression that a good deal of money goes to the grain-growing and cow-using industries. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcdonalds-hamburgers/173224/19 "2003-05-09T05:52:08Z")
Back to the OP. I’m pretty sure the rumor that McDonalds uses soy products in its patties is a joke that’s gotten out of hand. Consider that McDonalds has a reputation of being bottom rung of even fast food burgers as far as quality and taste. Apparently this is due to their use of lower fat beef, which makes it less flavorful. Also, I suspect the use of heat lamps on prepared burgers plays a role in this. Anyway, someone wishing to explain the reputation might conclude that the patties must not be real beef. One joke on the Tonight Show is all it would take to make an urban legend out of it.