The Truth About Taco Bell Beef

There's a lot of talk right now about what really hides inside Taco Bell's beef — better known as "Taco Meat Filling" — and so naturally the fast food restaurant was bound to chime in with some rather angry words:

TACO BELL STATEMENT REGARDING CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT
"At Taco Bell, we buy our beef from the same trusted brands you find in the supermarket, like Tyson Foods. We start with 100
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percent USDA-inspected beef. Then we simmer it in our proprietary blend of seasonings and spices to give our seasoned beef its signature Taco Bell taste and texture. We are proud of the quality of our beef and identify all the seasoning and spice ingredients on our website. Unfortunately, the lawyers in this case elected to sue first and ask questions later — and got their 'facts' absolutely wrong. We plan to take legal action for the false statements being made about our food." -- Greg Creed, President and Chief Concept Officer, Taco Bell Corp.



Taco Bell "beef" pseudo-Mexican delicacies are really made of a gross mixture called "Taco Meat Filling" as shown on their big container's labels, like the one pictured here, which customers can't see. The list of ingredients is gruesome:

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Beef, water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin (a polysaccharide that is absorbed as glucose), soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder, silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate, and potassium lactate.

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It looks gruesome but passable... until you learn that, according to the Alabama law firm suing Taco Bell—only 36% of that is beef. Thirty-six percent. The other 64% is mostly tasteless fibers—which are there to increase volume while keeping the cost down—additives and some flavoring and coloring. Everything is processed into a mass that actually looks like beef, and packed into
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big containers labeled as "taco meat filling." These containers get shipped to Taco Bell's outlets and cooked into something that, again, looks like beef, is called beef and is advertised as beef.

But can you call beef something that looks ground beef but it's 64% lots-of-other-stuff? Taco Bell thinks they can.

That's the reason why an Alabama law firm is presenting a class action lawsuit for false advertising, claiming that what Taco Bell claims is "beef" in their commercials is just the aforementioned processed clustermass of disgust. It appears that they have a very good point.

According to the USDA, Taco Bell can't call this mixture "beef" at all. Beef is officially defined as "flesh of cattle", and ground beef is defined as:

Chopped fresh and/or frozen beef with or without seasoning and without the addition of beef fat as such, shall not contain more than 30 percent fat, and shall not contain added water, phosphates, binders, or extenders.

That is certainly nothing like the mix that Taco Bell is using in their products.

The law firm argues that the taco.. Click here to continue to the rest of the article..

Sources: 1 & 2