(NaturalNews) The word spread like wildfire across the internet: An Alabama law firm had filed a class action lawsuit against Taco Bell in California, saying its meat fails to meet the definition of beef set forth by the U.S. government (and even that's a pretty low hurdle, if you ask me). The lawsuit claims Taco Bell's meat cannot be honestly advertised as "beef" because it claims tests showed the meat was only 35% beef, not the 70% beef required by federal standards.
"It's mainly soy and oats, and there's lots of other stuff in there that I don't even know how to pronounce," said attorney Dee Miles.
Taco Bell responded quickly, saying their meat was "88% beef" and that they buy the same brand of beef sold in supermarkets -- Tyson Foods.
Oh well, that clears it all up, then. Tyson Foods.
And what's the other 12%? According to Taco Bell, it's water, spices, oats, starch and "other ingredients" that the restaurant says contribute to the "quality" of its beef. Apparently, Taco Bell believes the way to enhance the quality of beef is to throw in things that are not beef.
So what else might be found in that "other ingredients" category? A quick look at Taco Bell's own website reveals the restaurant uses all the following ingredients in its various menu offerings:
• Autolyzed Yeast Extract (which contains MSG, an excitotoxin)
• Red #40, Blue #1, Yellow #6 artificial colors
• Corn syrup solids
• Partially Hydrogenated Corn Oil
• Soy Protein
• Propylene Glycol Alginate
• Dimethylpolysiloxane (an anti-foaming chemical)
Source:
http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/ingredientstatementAre you seriously eating at Taco Bell?
If you're eating at Taco Bell, there's not something wrong with their meat...
there's something wrong with your head.Even if Taco Bell's beef is 100% beef, it's still conventional beef from cows that are processed in factory farm operations (rather than open-range grass-fed cows). The soy ingredients used in Taco Bell foods are almost certainly GMO soy in origin. The other chemicals such as
dimethylpolysiloxane make their foods sound more like chemical concoctions than real food.
Then again, Taco Bell beef is probably no worse than any other fast food restaurant. These junk food chains all exist
at the fringes of the very definition of "food". What they serve is more like PHUD.
In fact, in some ways Taco Bell is actually far better than some other popular restaurants. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), for example, uses
monosodium glutamate across a huge percentage of its menu items. And they advertise their fried chicken as "fresh!" (How is it fresh if it's fried? The claim makes no sense...)
Suddenly we care about food quality at Taco Bell?
But seriously, the bigger issue here isn't Taco Bell's meat ingredients as much as it is Americans' dietary complacency:
If you eat at Taco Bell, you don't CARE what you're eating. Why should it matter if it's meat, or soy, or even recycled rat turds? The very fact that somebody is eating at Taco Bell already establishes they're not very interested in the purity, origins and nutritional potency of the foods they consume.
If a guy walked up to me, for example, and showed me a Taco Bell beef burrito and complained, "Dude, I'm not sure if this is real beef! What do you think is the problem here?" Then I would pause, examine the burrito carefully, then reply, "The problem is...
you're a moron!"
Since when did people ever read the ingredients of the food they buy at Taco Bell anyway?
I guess reading ingredients lists is just too complicated these days
That's the glaring contradiction in all this, frankly. Of all these people sounding the alert over Taco Bell's beef, how many of them ever read the ingredients of the food they buy at Taco Bell in the first place? How many read ingredients at ANY restaurant? How many read the ingredients of the foods they buy at the grocery store? How many consider whether their favorite restaurants are cooking their food on toxic nonstick cookware?
The answer is
virtually none. Because if mainstream America actually read (and understood) the chemicals going into the foods they buy every single day -- like bacon, sausage, canned soups and processed foods -- there would be
an overnight food revolt that would make Taco Bell's beef burrito issue seem irrelevant.
Because Taco Bell's ingredient list isn't any worse than what you find in canned soups at your grocery store right now. And if you really want to find some toxic foods, look into the children's frozen food section where you'll find some of the most obnoxious and damaging chemicals of all, including sodium nitrite which causes cancer, and artificial colors which are derived from coal tars.
I recently produced and posted a mini-documentary video showing how
blueberries are faked in many mainstream food products, including cereals from General Mills and Kellogg's. You can watch that video at
www.FoodInvestigations.comNobody seemed to go berserk over that. Fake blueberries are acceptable to mainstream consumers, it seems. But fake beef? Oh, now that's messin' with the food supply!
Eat up, America! The beef in your burrito is no more fake than the idea that the FDA-approved processed dead food supply is somehow good for your health. By the way, you're also paying for your fake food using
fake money being counterfeited by the Federal Reserve faster than you can say, "genetically modified soybean filler material."
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams launched NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted pioneer in the email marketing software industry, having been the first to launch an HTML email newsletter technology that has grown to become a standard in the industry. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Saturday, January 29, 2011
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