Food Friday: Mystery Meat Du Jour! Yum! | The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans LLC

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Yes, hi, I’d like the meat that’s not really meat on a bun and the meat that’s not really meat in a tortilla with a side of rectangle shaped pepperoni pizza with those little pepperoni nuggets that look like pepperoni but I’m not really sure if they are, please?

If you were ever looking for a reason to stop eating fast food, this is it. Or at least this is it to me. (You can keep on munching, I won’t judge.)

I can say this here because this is a place where we try to be healthy in the first place, so we need reason to keep riding that wagon.

This week a lawsuit was filed against Taco Bell claiming its beef is only 35% beef and the rest is, well, not beef. 

(Gag.)

The lawsuit claims that the “beef” should be called “filling” because the rest of the 65 % of it is made up of “other ingredients,” among some of them, “water, Isolated Oat Product” (whatever that is) and a bunch of other filler-y type stuff  and it “does not meet the definition of beef.”

Now, I never really went to Taco Bell for its nutritional value in the first place and in fact, when I get going I can have a pretty nasty drive-thru addiction (especially when someone like my personal trainer tells me I can’t have something), so outside reports that gross me out are especially helpful to keeping me honest and eating healthily and the claim of the beef not being beef is enough to turn me off of my Mexican Pizza cravings.  At least for now. (My trainer should be so proud.)

I know Taco Bell assumes that there are probably more people like me who get grossed out simply by listening to one report and that’s why they plan on countersuing and to be fair, Taco Bell is defending their beef in its burritoey taco-ey Gorditaness saying that it is indeed all beef simmered in its special sauces.

But honestly, this isn’t even about Taco Bell and their alleged 35% beef. Whether or not the meat was tested or wasn’t tested or who said what doesn’t matter and it’s not even the point (I mean, will we ever really know the answer anyway?) Heck, this isn’t even about Taco Bell!

The fact is, we don’t know what’s in there or in any other of the meaty-ness of the other fast foodies and we never did!  

This is about you and me, consuming mystery meat by the droves! From anywhere that provides the mystery meat via drive-thru! We must stop the madness!

Yes, it is cheap. Yes it is fast. But we have no idea of its origin. It is all mystery. They can tell me it’s not, but I will never be sure and I don’t have a lab and a petri dish and test tubes and whatever they use to test the meat and I won’t even pretend I am capable of analyzing such a thing.

In fact, if you dive a little deeper into the fake foodness, shortly after news of the lawsuit broke, a flood of followers hit the internet to “out” some of the other foods on store shelves. Like blueberry muffins that don’t actually have blueberries in them (to be fair, Jiffy is completely open about it right on the front of the box about having imitation blueberries). And cereals in which the “blueberry crunchlets” are actually “sugar, corn cereal, soybean oil, modified corn starch, water, natural and artificial flavor, glycerin, corn syrup, red #40 lake, and blue #2 lake,” as reported in the same article on Delish.

But does any of this sound appetizing? (What are all those words?! Blue lake?)

I think this is a perfect time to gently remind ourselves that part of nutrition and weight-loss is finding and eating real food with real nutritional value with ingredients we can pronounce.

And I know there are no surprises here and I am among a crowd of avid label readers here at the Sisterhood, right? We’re an educated bunch. We are all grown-ups making our own decisions in a world filled with convenience and fake food. Some of us are winning, some of us aren’t and some of us (like me) simply need an excuse to put down the fast food.

And I gotta tell ya, my own whole wheat burrito with 100% turkey meat and shredded cheese with a spinach salad on the side never looked (or sounded) so good.

So is homemade sounding good to you yet? What are your fast food vices? And would you ever change your eating habits based on these (or any) reports?

Feel free to dish.

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