Taco Bell's beef is actually only 36% beef. Yikes.

[Wortel]

Anybody seen food inc.?

That's scary.

[psyave]

Though psyave I hear that excuse given over and over again "To extend shelf life" though if you consider the beef patty at Mc Donoalds or the chicken at KFC the amount of stock you would go through every day kind of makes that a mute point.

hmmm forgot about this thread. with bourbon and ben kweller i attempt to explain why a fast food outlet might strive for better shelf life.

Shelf life doesn't actually have to include the actually life of the product, but rather maintaining a high quality and retention of flavor. Most products already have a defined shelf life limit which is defined from the the local government. So most of the time increasing shelf-life just means increasing the stability. Stability with respect to food usually means protection against pathogenic microorganisms and also microorganisms that may diminish the quality of the product. Staph has probably one of the lowest water activity level for common pathogenic bacteria, around 0.86, so if you increase the fiber in a process food you decrease the available water. Which is actually quite a simple technique of protecting food. Remember everyone carries some sort of staph and ~33% of the population will carry S. aureus.

Industrial additives are just preservatives, some will be "organic" and some will be "non-organic". This is like common sense shit for processed food, if you expect to maintain quality (ie your product not breaking down due to bacterial growth), add these. Listeria has a mortality rate of ~30%, and if your preggers, it will cause spontaneous abortions if you are infected by it. Now, listeria is quite cold adaptive, it can easily grow around 4degC, it also loves meaty products. Preservatives are the most effective way of killing listeria. If your talking about canned food Clostridium is high on your list. For example C. botulinum produces 7 toxins, all highly fatal, with 4 of the toxins fatal in 5 minutes and the effective does is around 0.000000001g, its the 1000x more effective than any chemical weapon produced. this toxin can easily be heat inactivated at around 60degC. Dumb arse fucking people have died from this toxin because they think eating raw cheese is better for them, because pasteurizing cheese, means somehow its "not" organic anymore and it destroys the flavor.

As for the coloring and flavors. Throw them in... but why? If you produce meat in Illinois, and then ship it all over the US, no matter how fast you ship it without these additives, the quality of the product will decrease.. Chemically speaking colorings and flavors are like chemical preservatives, maintaining the taste and appearance quality of a product.

If this is going to be a 'super size me' thing, I really don't understand. Its fast food, don't eat it all the time fool. Personally, your talking about a major fast food corporation. They are trying to maintain the same flavor and product line in every single store around the globe, they would never get away with it if they did not process there food. Alternatively, these is most likely a local mexican joint down the road that will serve tacos that arn't made from processed food. It will cost more, take longer to cook and may/may not taste better than the taco bills sludge. Hey, its your taste buds and your time, eat what you want. But why is everyone hating of the processed industry, we would not be a first world nation without these corporations and without this technology. Sure you might go though all your stock each day, but you only want a few factories to produce your food and you want every factory to produce the same food consistently.

Hmmm, my mind is swaying to different areas of thought any shit, so ill leave one 2 final thoughts before I forget them.

1. Just look at the alcohol industry. Every single alcohol is sooooo processed, but you think that its all natural. You can bet your buck that any wine produced in Australia has some sort of preservative... And beer, either mass produced Vic or Carlton, or smaller micro breweries, there industrial process of creating beer is done down to a T. If both Alcoholic industries didn't do what why do, loss of product would occur, which in turn would lead to loss of revenue, and which would lead to me having never have heard of them.

2. Don't believe all the crap about organic foods. By regulation, organic farmers still need to use a pesticide for pest regulation. They might sell the food as "completely organic", but did they tell you about the pesticide? or they might claim to be pesticide free (By using something that isn't traditionally classed as a pesticide), or they might say 'Hey we use organic pesticides'... ok isn't a fucking organic pesticide the same thing as a chemical pesticide? its still gonna do they same fucking thing.

And on a silly note. Please explain to me how a 'organic tomato' is somehow different from a 'tomato'. Miss advertisement. Someday a farmer of the 'Tomato' will sue the organic industry for mislabeling its products. The same way the soy drink industry was sued by the milk industry for calling its products soy milk (How they fuck does a soy plant product milk is beyond me).

And on another note about tomatos... Currently no where in the world does a country sell genetically modified tomatos. For a sort period, Britain did and no one battered an eye lid for several years. Until someone spotted it on the canned and ran a scare campaign. During that period canned tomato's could be produced at half the cost and not to surprisingly no one was harmed by inducing the tomato's. There need to be more education about genetically modified products. Firstly, if you eat DNA from a tomato that has been modified it will not kill you, you will not turn into a tomato. Likewise, if you sniff up some of your pet dogs hairs, you will not die and you will not turn into a dog. DNA cannot magically be inserted into your genome when induced.

And while we are on the topic of tomatos. That whole thing about "a tomato was modified do it wouldn't ripen until they add some chemical..." yep its true, it was modified naturally, and the long way, by some farmer breeding tomato's until he obtained several plants that would produce tomatos that didn't fully ripen without this secret chemical... Guess what, that secret chemical is some common alcohol. And this process has increased the shelf-life of a tomato to around 100 days or so. So now you can ship a tomato from anywhere in Australia without it going off. This process cut down on the 2 biggest food wastage's from tomatos, 1. going off on the supermarket shelf and 2. destruction while been transported. And the funny thing about this... the organic industry uses this process, so that's right, there tomatoes are just as modified as the next.


I'm slightly drunk while typing all this shit up, but if you have any more direct question I could answer, just post away and i'll try get to them. I have a few years experience in a routine testing environment. atm I'm working for the worlds leading food testing company, in their only research laboratory, doing specialized research, food stability research and shelf life research.

and I'm not going to lie, I try by organic on certain items, but I know for a fact that not everything that is sold as organic is as good for you or better for you. So I go the cheaper alternative, meh, its exactly the same. But please, don't go out and drink raw milk or eat raw cheese, its one of the easiest ways of getting salmonella, losing 5KG of weight and then curling over and dying.

[psyave]

And as for food inc... yes Monsanto is possibly the most evil corporation I know of.

[Harbinger]

Psy avs drunken biology lessons are such a highlight of these forums.