So one of the most devastating pieces of information that has come out of Wikileaks is what Taco Bell “seasoned beef” really is. It’s only 35% beef and the rest is stuff like water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch, and sodium phosphate. Now, you’re probably saying it’s good they put an anti-dusting agent in it because you wouldn’t want it collecting dust when they leave it out on counter for days, but the rest of the stuff is a little disturbing. And that’s why people are suing Taco Bell to change the name of their seasoned beef to something more accurate like “meat-flavored oatmeal”.
Just like with national security secrets, I come down firmly saying these are things the public just doesn’t need to know. We understand something is off with fast food — no one has ever cooked a burger in their homes that even slightly resembled a McDonald’s hamburger — but it’s tasty and it’s cheap and that’s all we really need to know. Will knowing what a chicken nugget is actually composed of make us safer? No, it will only make us more afraid. As long as the FDA ensures these things won’t kill me too quickly, all we really need to know about what we shove down our pie hole is that it is salty and tasty. And if it eventually mutates us over time into vampires, we kinda figured we were going there one way or another anyway.