Fast Food Industry Secrets
11-17-2005, 11:29 AM
#1
Senior Moderator
Thread Starter
Fast Food Industry Secrets
Well, you folks probably know most of the facts already...but, just in case you don't, here are some reasons why fast foods just are not meant for consumption...Bad, bad stuff and really only eat it if you have NO other choice and as rarely as possible...
==================
Fast Food Industry Secrets
By Adrienne Turner
The U.S. has more than 300 types of fast-food chains; combined, these artery-clogging joints account for more than 40% of the nation's total restaurant sales.
It seems as though the nation's obsession with burgers and fries should be weakening; after all, the government has launched numerous campaigns to combat obesity and encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables. But with Americans spending more than $110 billion on fast food annually (up from $6 billion in 1970), the plan does not seem to be working.
One out of every four people in the U.S. eats fast food every day and one out of every five toddlers eats fries every day. The "golden arches" logo is more recognized than the Christian cross and studies show that many children recognize the arches before they can even recognize their own name.
It's cheap, it's fast and it delivers a greasy punch that can cure nearly any hangover. But the one-food-fits-all idea that has served billions since its inception may not sound so tempting after you read about some if its shortcuts and secrets.
Find out how your favorite fast-food restaurant is cooking your next meal.
The flavor in the fries is not potato -- it's meat.
Everyone knows that you can't order a burger without a side of fries. To that end, fast food chains have been working for years to master the art of the fry and keep their loyal customers happy.
What the average person does not realize is that the taste of a French fry is not determined by the potato, but rather by the way the potato is cooked. Until very recently, McDonald's fries were cooked with 93% beef tallow -- their fries had more saturated fat than a hamburger!
Due to some bad publicity regarding the amount of cholesterol in their fries, they switched to vegetable oil in 1990. However, McDonald's still continues to use an ingredient they refer to as "natural flavoring," which they admit comes from an animal (they just won't reveal which one).
There are animal by-products in the milkshakes.
The average strawberry milkshake at a fast-food restaurant contains more than 50 different chemicals, many of which could only be deciphered by a scientist. In addition to these four- and five-syllable words in the ingredient list, they also contain something called "natural flavoring," which, as aforementioned, may in fact come from nature, but not in the form that you'd expect.
The Food and Drug Administration insists that to claim the use of "natural ingredients" in a food product, the ingredients have to be derived from natural sources. Natural sources include herbs, spices, yeast, roots, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, and other animals. Therefore, the natural flavoring in your strawberry shake is probably not strawberry.
In fact, we learned that many fast food chains do use animal products like gelatin to add taste and thickness to their milkshakes.
There may be beef in your chicken.
There are many myths that suggest that fast-food hamburgers are not really made from beef. Well, we're going to give the fast-food chains a little credit here: most of them are now made with 100% real beef. However, what we've learned is that many chicken products at fast-food restaurants also include beef -- most notably, the nuggets and sandwiches. These alleged chicken meals contain beef products to deliver extra flavor (hey, it worked with the fries!).
In addition to the part-beef, part-chicken sandwiches, many other products are also likely to be packed with flavor additives to provide extra taste.
When you order a hickory smoked bacon cheeseburger, it doesn't really come from a hickory barbecue grill outside. Everything in a fast-food restaurant is cooked on the same greasy grill, which would logically give everything the same greasy taste.
So how do they get that rich, smoky taste when everything tastes like oil from the grill? They process the meat with flavor additives. These additives are created by scientists in a lab, who can make anything from mesquite BBQ to chipotle ranch simply by mixing a few chemicals together.
The guy who made your burger may not have washed his hands after using the bathroom.
Dateline NBC, the news magazine famous for revealing secrets about big industries, was the first media outlet to do a national survey on the overall cleanliness of fast-food chains.
Dateline journalists went undercover to discover the dirty truth about the top 10 fast-food chains in the nation. After studying a sample of 1,000 restaurants across 38 states, they found that most had a few cleanliness violations.
In their research, the Dateline crew found rodents and insects (alive and dead), grime and debris in several chains. At a Taco Bell in California, a man found a piece of chewing gum in his taco. A customer at Hardee's in Florida was handed a soda with blood dripping from the cup (he was also given back bloody change after he paid for his meal). At a Wendy's in Chicago, inspectors found a dead rodent decaying in a trap in the kitchen area.
More than 60% of the restaurants had what experts refer to as "critical violations," which are benchmarks for judging a restaurant's cleanliness. Critical violations can fuel food-borne illnesses (such as salmonella) and, aside from that, are just nasty.
The most common violations in fast-food chains? Employees not washing their hands (in some chains, there was no soap in the bathrooms), improper food holding temperatures, undercooked meat, and employees handling food with their bare hands.
Fast-food meals contain common food allergy ingredients, but they don't tell you which ones.
There are a variety of different ingredients used in even the most simple fast-food products you purchase at your local drive-thru. So if you have food allergies, you may want to think twice before you visit the golden arches.
A sausage burrito at McDonald's contains more than 50 different ingredients, including milk, egg, wheat, corn syrup, and a range of chemicals and preservative agents. The hash browns are cooked with animal products and the bacon contains wheat and soy.
Some fast-food joints, like Jack in the Box, spell out the most common sources of food allergies and then mention that one or more of their products may contain the allergens, but they don't specify which ones. Just covering all their bases, we think. Our advice: order a diet cola.
Fries are not made from 100% potato.
When fast-food restaurants started, fries were made from real potatoes, which were peeled and sliced each morning. Today, nearly all fast-food fries arrive at the restaurants frozen and processed.
Since potatoes become discolored during the freezing process (when they are stored in temperatures below 45° F), they must be treated with sulphites at the production plant to avoid this natural phenomenon. Oh, and there is no peeling or slicing involved -- all fries are now made with machines.
Sulfur dioxide is also commonly used to bleach the fries, which gives them a nice, white appearance when frozen. Also, a sugar dip is sometimes used to improve the sugar content of the potatoes.
In addition to these preservative agents, the fries are cooked in hydrogenated oils -- molecularly changed oils that are used in a variety of processed foods and are toxic to the body. Hydrogenated oils preserve the consistency and longevity of the fries, which means that it takes a long time before they get soggy or moldy. Hydrogenated oils have been linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
So if you thought that you were on your way to getting your five-veggies-a-day by ordering fries, think again. You're not really eating only potatoes.
==================
Fast Food Industry Secrets
By Adrienne Turner
The U.S. has more than 300 types of fast-food chains; combined, these artery-clogging joints account for more than 40% of the nation's total restaurant sales.
It seems as though the nation's obsession with burgers and fries should be weakening; after all, the government has launched numerous campaigns to combat obesity and encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables. But with Americans spending more than $110 billion on fast food annually (up from $6 billion in 1970), the plan does not seem to be working.
One out of every four people in the U.S. eats fast food every day and one out of every five toddlers eats fries every day. The "golden arches" logo is more recognized than the Christian cross and studies show that many children recognize the arches before they can even recognize their own name.
It's cheap, it's fast and it delivers a greasy punch that can cure nearly any hangover. But the one-food-fits-all idea that has served billions since its inception may not sound so tempting after you read about some if its shortcuts and secrets.
Find out how your favorite fast-food restaurant is cooking your next meal.
The flavor in the fries is not potato -- it's meat.
Everyone knows that you can't order a burger without a side of fries. To that end, fast food chains have been working for years to master the art of the fry and keep their loyal customers happy.
What the average person does not realize is that the taste of a French fry is not determined by the potato, but rather by the way the potato is cooked. Until very recently, McDonald's fries were cooked with 93% beef tallow -- their fries had more saturated fat than a hamburger!
Due to some bad publicity regarding the amount of cholesterol in their fries, they switched to vegetable oil in 1990. However, McDonald's still continues to use an ingredient they refer to as "natural flavoring," which they admit comes from an animal (they just won't reveal which one).
There are animal by-products in the milkshakes.
The average strawberry milkshake at a fast-food restaurant contains more than 50 different chemicals, many of which could only be deciphered by a scientist. In addition to these four- and five-syllable words in the ingredient list, they also contain something called "natural flavoring," which, as aforementioned, may in fact come from nature, but not in the form that you'd expect.
The Food and Drug Administration insists that to claim the use of "natural ingredients" in a food product, the ingredients have to be derived from natural sources. Natural sources include herbs, spices, yeast, roots, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, and other animals. Therefore, the natural flavoring in your strawberry shake is probably not strawberry.
In fact, we learned that many fast food chains do use animal products like gelatin to add taste and thickness to their milkshakes.
There may be beef in your chicken.
There are many myths that suggest that fast-food hamburgers are not really made from beef. Well, we're going to give the fast-food chains a little credit here: most of them are now made with 100% real beef. However, what we've learned is that many chicken products at fast-food restaurants also include beef -- most notably, the nuggets and sandwiches. These alleged chicken meals contain beef products to deliver extra flavor (hey, it worked with the fries!).
In addition to the part-beef, part-chicken sandwiches, many other products are also likely to be packed with flavor additives to provide extra taste.
When you order a hickory smoked bacon cheeseburger, it doesn't really come from a hickory barbecue grill outside. Everything in a fast-food restaurant is cooked on the same greasy grill, which would logically give everything the same greasy taste.
So how do they get that rich, smoky taste when everything tastes like oil from the grill? They process the meat with flavor additives. These additives are created by scientists in a lab, who can make anything from mesquite BBQ to chipotle ranch simply by mixing a few chemicals together.
The guy who made your burger may not have washed his hands after using the bathroom.
Dateline NBC, the news magazine famous for revealing secrets about big industries, was the first media outlet to do a national survey on the overall cleanliness of fast-food chains.
Dateline journalists went undercover to discover the dirty truth about the top 10 fast-food chains in the nation. After studying a sample of 1,000 restaurants across 38 states, they found that most had a few cleanliness violations.
In their research, the Dateline crew found rodents and insects (alive and dead), grime and debris in several chains. At a Taco Bell in California, a man found a piece of chewing gum in his taco. A customer at Hardee's in Florida was handed a soda with blood dripping from the cup (he was also given back bloody change after he paid for his meal). At a Wendy's in Chicago, inspectors found a dead rodent decaying in a trap in the kitchen area.
More than 60% of the restaurants had what experts refer to as "critical violations," which are benchmarks for judging a restaurant's cleanliness. Critical violations can fuel food-borne illnesses (such as salmonella) and, aside from that, are just nasty.
The most common violations in fast-food chains? Employees not washing their hands (in some chains, there was no soap in the bathrooms), improper food holding temperatures, undercooked meat, and employees handling food with their bare hands.
Fast-food meals contain common food allergy ingredients, but they don't tell you which ones.
There are a variety of different ingredients used in even the most simple fast-food products you purchase at your local drive-thru. So if you have food allergies, you may want to think twice before you visit the golden arches.
A sausage burrito at McDonald's contains more than 50 different ingredients, including milk, egg, wheat, corn syrup, and a range of chemicals and preservative agents. The hash browns are cooked with animal products and the bacon contains wheat and soy.
Some fast-food joints, like Jack in the Box, spell out the most common sources of food allergies and then mention that one or more of their products may contain the allergens, but they don't specify which ones. Just covering all their bases, we think. Our advice: order a diet cola.
Fries are not made from 100% potato.
When fast-food restaurants started, fries were made from real potatoes, which were peeled and sliced each morning. Today, nearly all fast-food fries arrive at the restaurants frozen and processed.
Since potatoes become discolored during the freezing process (when they are stored in temperatures below 45° F), they must be treated with sulphites at the production plant to avoid this natural phenomenon. Oh, and there is no peeling or slicing involved -- all fries are now made with machines.
Sulfur dioxide is also commonly used to bleach the fries, which gives them a nice, white appearance when frozen. Also, a sugar dip is sometimes used to improve the sugar content of the potatoes.
In addition to these preservative agents, the fries are cooked in hydrogenated oils -- molecularly changed oils that are used in a variety of processed foods and are toxic to the body. Hydrogenated oils preserve the consistency and longevity of the fries, which means that it takes a long time before they get soggy or moldy. Hydrogenated oils have been linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
So if you thought that you were on your way to getting your five-veggies-a-day by ordering fries, think again. You're not really eating only potatoes.
Last edited by Yumcha; 11-17-2005 at 11:34 AM.
11-17-2005, 11:39 AM
#2
My Garage
Originally Posted by Yumchah
One out of every four people in the U.S. eats fast food every day and one out of every five toddlers eats fries every day.
I eat that shit once or twice a year at most
11-17-2005, 11:41 AM
#3
Senior Moderator
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by GIBSON6594
I eat that shit once or twice a year at most
Trending Topics
11-17-2005, 10:39 PM
#9
Senior Moderator
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by huckleberry
link to that article ?
11-18-2005, 08:26 AM
#11
Go Giants
At McDonalds - Grilled chicken salad - no dressing or croutons
Wendys - Fingerless Chili
No BK
Wendys - Fingerless Chili
No BK
11-18-2005, 11:49 AM
#12
That's Racist
Join Date: Aug 2004
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What a nice tidbit of information.
I will still continue to eat fast food however.
People need to control themselves better. =P
I will still continue to eat fast food however.
People need to control themselves better. =P
11-18-2005, 12:33 PM
#13
Senior Moderator
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by Time For Sleeep
What a nice tidbit of information.
I will still continue to eat fast food however.
People need to control themselves better. =P
I will still continue to eat fast food however.
People need to control themselves better. =P
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