When I was teaching I used to tell my Psych 101 students that hamburger used in fast food restaurants used 100% beef in their buger. Then I would draw a huge circle on the chaulk board and then a smaller circle within the larger one. I’d point to this smaller circle and say, “…see this? This is 100% beef. Anyone know what the other part of the patty is made from?” Half being facetious, the other quite serious. However, I never followed through with a real meat packing facility to find out what the other matter in the patty was. Recently watching Fast Food nation whilst flipping around the tele, I saw that theyhave actually found fecal matter in beef patties bought from fast food drive through windows.
So doea anyone know what animal parts actually go into the beef patties/ hambuger ones gets when one goes to a fast food restaurant?
Seriously, though, fast food places are in the business of serving up meat as cheap as possible. You won’t find much suitable-for-human-consumption meat that’s cheaper than good ol’ ground beef.
100% beef also has nothing to do with it’s fat content. You can buy the 94% lean beef at your grocery store or have a fast food burger that is 40% fat and both would be considered 100% beef.
Good cites. But I think the OP’s question is not “Do they use 100% beef in their burgers?” but “Are their burgers 100% composed of beef?” Two very different questions. I use 100% lemon juice in my lemonade, but my lemonade is not 100% lemon juice.
Even the New Zealand McDonald’s site leaves it semantically ambiguous to the tinfoil hat crowd:
“Using the best quality beef”…“…our beef is 100% Beef…” But are their BURGERS 100% beef? Or do they use the best quality 100% beef to make their burgers…along with other stuff like cheap soy fillers? It’s a good point to make in a class where evaluation of studies and statistics means you have to read between every line.
I’m inclined to believe that they do use all (cheap) beef in their burgers, but I’m a rather trusting sort.
I remember a few years back when we had somebody who swore to hell and back that McDonald’s used earthworms in their burgers. Never minding the fact that worms are more expensive than beef, the guy could not be convinced.
That ended up turning into a multi page fun-fest. Alas, that thread was ‘disappeared’ in one of the thread pogroms.
And you will note that the meat to fat ratio is 80% to 20%, a leanness for which you’d have to pay more at a butcher shop. The food would not be so fast if the McFryCooks spent more time cleaning up the additional fat rendered by cooking so it’s at a level that is a balance between flavor and easy cleanup.
Also, fecal matter has been found in all grades of ground beef (and lettuce and spinach), not just from fast food joints. It’s not supposed to be there and has been linked to E. coli outbreaks, but when you’re dismembering an animal that just died a violent death some manure can come in contact with the edible stuff. Take comfort in the obvious fact that McDonalds, Burger King, and even Taco Bell are not in business to kill their customers, at least not immediately, and take measures to prevent it.
Perhaps next semester you’ll learn more about what you are passing along before you default to the cutesy-pie, alarmist, and untrue. Your students are paying for better out of you.
Am I crazy, or is some form of fecal matter or another virtually ubiquitous?
Would I be off base to say that the OP – as well as myself and all the posters in this thread – has, at this moment – a non-zero amount of fecal matter on his hands, clothes, computer keyboard, coffee cup, money, etc?
Our restaurant receives its products from an in-house distribution system. All our products, including the hamburger patties, have a full ingredients list on the packaging.
The ingredients list on our hamburger patties is as follows:
You may be interested to know, though, where that beef comes from. They buy beef from “retired” dairy cows (which are generally considered too lean to be good eating), and mix it in with fat trimmed from steer beef (to be sold as reduced fat). This not only allows them to get both components of their beef cheaply, it also lets them precisely and consistently control the fat content, to exactly what they’ve decided is optimum.
So it’s perhaps not quite what the consumer is expecting, but it is still 100% beef.
<nitpick> No, not good cites. Those cites have terrible credibility for this particular subject. Leaving aside the issue of whether the information is correct, which I do not claim to possess the expertise to know that it is or not, brickbacon is positing that a particular company’s product is made with 100% beef, and the cites provided are:
A web page that absolutely anyone in the world can edit anonymously, regardless of expertise in the subject area of the page, or bias regarding disputed facts
A site whose very name , “Morgan Spurlock Watch”, suggests a strong agenda to discredit another party with an agenda, rather than simply be an objective source of information
The company itself, hardly an objective source.
Those cites suck in terms of credibility.
Love-
A high school teacher who just finished spending a year trying to teach students how to evaluate online sources.
</nitpick>
Well the “burger” is the sandwich; it’s the patty that we’d be more interested in. Since it’s obvious that the burger isn’t 100% beef, but yet the burgers are made with 100% beef, is it really naïve to think that the patty isn’t 100% beef? Yes, I’m aware of all the direct links indicating that the patties are 100%, but taken on its own, wouldn’t that be the standard expectation? Now that I think of it, there’s an advertiser – not sure who or if it’s TV or radio – that mentions 100% all beef patties, which does rather get more to the point.
I believe the jingle goes: " All beef patty, special sauce, special cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun…
Or something to that end.
Anyway, I like some of the cites, and I think Chronos got it right: Theindustry goes for the quickest, cheapest, and most sanitary as they can, way to get the beef that goes into these patties.
Do you find something wrong with eating dairy cows that are past their productive period? Maybe I’m reading more into your post than is there, but I get the impression that you are trying to spin using dairy cow beef mixed with trimmed fat as something distasteful.
Does anyone understand the food labeling laws in this country?
If McDonald’s or Burger King claims their patties are 100% beef, then they’re 100% beef, with no soy extenders or other fillers. How it is naive to think that? Isn’t it more naive to think that they could somehow, with the intense scrutiny of their every move, slip things into the burgers and not have anyone in the universe find out?
I don’t understand why 100% beef should be the default either. It’s obviously more expensive. There is no question that some burger joints in the past have used extenders. However, today’s marketplace makes it virtually impossible for that to be competitive. 100% beef is a marketing plus. Any fillers would be a public relations nightmare. It would be naive to think otherwise. And can a cite be given for a company that advertises 100% beef burgers rather than 100% beef patties or the equivalent?
Not in my experience. In my supermarket 80/20 is the fattest and therefore cheapest grade of hamburger. It goes up to 85/15, 90/10, and 95/5. The only fatter meat is a blend made for meatloaf.
I’m embarrassed that we have an admission by an OP that he has been lying to classes on a subject he hasn’t researched and thinks that a finding of fecal matter would disprove the 100% claim (as if they added it deliberately and listed it among the ingredients), and that this misinformation is being backed up by conspiracy theorists who are refusing to believe facts when they are posted.
Next time you all jump on the people who think that missiles hit the towers or the moon landing was hoaxed, you might want to remember this thread and blush.
I wonder if that varies regionally. Here in SE Louisiana, 73/27 is the default ground beef (notorious for shrinking down to nothing when making burgers). 80/20 is a little more expensive, but preferred for burgers and such. All the other grades you mentoned are available, too, but at a premium.
