7 ingredients to make Chicken Nuggets, including Silicone – yeah, that one they use for breast implants.
Photo from photoXpress
Fast food is in every corner of every major city of the world. And how can they ever run out of business, people would prefer to watch streamed TV shows rather than cook. We don’t have all the musing time and we have priorities to focus on. It’s rather paradoxical that eating quality food, that which is the basic necessity for our survival, is the most neglected and crammed.
We trust other people to prepare foods for us; but there’s no way can we be assured of the utter cleanliness of the ingredients, the preparations, and the promises of the fast food chain. For all we know, we are eating one week old refrigerated veggies marketed as fresh salad.
Contaminants
Since at minimal amount it can’t affect your body, it is legal to contain traces of maggots, rat poop and the like in products of fast food. The Dateline crew, in their research, found “rodents and insects (alive and dead), grime and debris in several chains”. (AskMen.com)
Documentary Food, Inc. showed that most cow meats are all mixed up in one grinding machine. If one cow is diseased, the rest is contaminated. Hamburgers and other meat are very susceptible to malicious bacteria, especially E. coli. How they clean it? They let it pass through ammonia gas. Ammonia is what you pee and what you clean your toilet with.
Certain fast foods admit that their products may contain additives that could irritate your allergies. They just won’t specify which products.
“The most common violations in fast-food chains? Employees not washing their hands (in some chains, there was no soap in the bathrooms), improper food holding temperatures, undercooked meat, and employees handling food with their bare hands.” (AskMen.com)
Expenses: Us and Them
Only 19% of cost you pay for your fast food product is accounted by food itself. The rest is just operations, packaging, marketing, and the aircon to keep your face fresh.
In 2009 alone, $4.2 Billion was spent on fast food advertising. Strategically, they targeted children more.
$1.6 Billion was the annual cost for online and TV advertisements for kids alone.
These fast food restaurants have high turnover, but they pay ridiculously low wages.
The food industry is serious about keeping silence from critics. If a party has a revealing study that could harm their industry, expect “heats” from multiple sources.
At Counters
Longer lines will make you buy more – due to exposure to temptation.
Fast foods have healthy options, hidden and more expensive; while value meals have blinded you to spend more since not all people like all to eat everything in the combo but coerced to by the offer.
Labels
Don’t trust their calorie count because it may be erroneous. An overstated net weight is more likely to be penalized by FDA than the understated, so they understate it more often.
“Low fat” label is just an illusion of a product being healthy. Check the calorie count because a “low-fat” chicken quesadillas have 742 calories.
A “zero trans fat” label meant there’s a lot of saturated fat.
“Sugar free” contained high fructose corn syrup.
At least 50 different chemicals are found in the average strawberry milkshake of fast foods. And since FDA’s definition of natural ingredients is anything derived from a natural source, these fast-foods can call a strawberry milkshake ‘natural’ when in fact it was from an animal derivative.
Ingredients
Wendy’s Frosty took at least 14 ingredients to make, including the chemical used as electronic cigarette’s filter.
McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets contain at least 7 ingredients to make, including silicone – the same substance they put on breasts implants.
McDonald’s Salad contained a chemical that is not even approved for cat food because its safety isn’t warranted.
Cellulose, a derivative of wood, is mixed with most processed foods to give texture. Cellulose took the place of oils and flours just because it is inexpensive. In turn, we get zero nutrition. Our stomach can’t digest cellulose, so it’ll be released as is.
The berries that topped the muffins are fake. Starting 2010, fake berries are in production. Ingredients? Food colorings and a bunch of chemicals interplay to mimic the chewy berries that we love. It’s cheaper than that of nature, but with zero health benefits.
French fries, the one that’s always hanging with our combos, are meat flavored, not potato. There’s even a time when McDonald’s French fries contained more saturated fat than their burgers. Due to the controversy, they’ve modified it, yet an ingredient was from an animal still. And fries, when refrigerated, became colorless. Hence, a chemical intervention. They even fry it with hydrogenated oil too keep its crisp, but that special kind of oil is toxic to our body, linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
Chicken products, like nuggets and sandwiches, contain beef as well to add taste.
The more lean you chose your beef to be, the higher sodium content it has. That is to make it juicy, because a lean cut took it off.
To keep it simple, there’s nothing simple in fast foods. All their products are bombarded with numerous chemicals and ingredients other than, say, chicken, beef, salad, potato and milk. Primarily, it is for prolonged preservation and unique flavor that would urge you to crave and come back. The real best trick is to eat raw food, it has the nutrition and it keeps you eating less.
If you have worked with fast food industry, or you have any additional dirty secret we opt to know, share it here.
More Moments for you:
Horsemeat Maltreat
World’s Best Excuses
Demise of Computer Mouse
15 Shocking Food Industry Secrets; Yahoo! Health
Things Fast-Food Companies Won’t Say; Yahoo! Finance
Fast Food Industry Secrets; AskMen.com
The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You; Cracked.com
7 Dirty Secrets Fast Food Chains Don’t Want You to Know; OrganicAuthority.com
Top 3 Shocking Fast Food Industry Secrets; FilthyLucre.com
10 Secrets The Processed Food Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know; CoachdebFitness.com
3 Fast Food Ingredient Secrets: Industrial Chemicals, Synthetic Meat; NaturalSociety.com
Moment Matters 
Great post, I often think sanitary conditions and cleanliness of facilities is often an indicator of how clean the kitchen is. People who care about their customers take time to keep the place clean. Fast food outlets and places employing folk on low wages with little motivation may not be too good for your health.
Thanks for sharing.
I know, I know. These fast foods won’t care about what’s inside – the wages they pay, the cleanliness of their kitchen, preparations, whatever. They would care so much on the outside, so they’ll look good and people will buy from them. Hey thanks for sharing too!
WTF. NOw I have to cook all the time…. Generally we’re very well behaved and only have take ou once in a while but this article will make me think twice about getting KFC/McDonalds/Pizza.
HAHA yeah, WTF! We better prepare our own food, that’ll be a battle but thinking of mouse poop in a take out food is nauseating. But everybody’s telling us fast food is bad for our health
Fast food .. yes there is a lot of dodgy places out there, but worst is the stands where food are sold from a trolley or something – they deal with money (most infected thing on earth) and serve food with the same hands, where do they wash their hands after mother nature has called. ????
They just wipe their hands on the wall?? urgh disturbing mental images. But yeah, money is filthy. It’s a bacteria nursery. But sometimes street foods taste awesome haha
I know … but I don’t buy anymore … they did a test in UK on the peanuts on the bar counter – 215 different urine in them.
Thats crazy! Too many urines, you would actually taste that already HAHA
You would think so – we wash our hands after being to the toilet and then we put our hands on the door handle that is full of “goodies” – so thankful to the one you invented hand wipes – hand bag size. That report about the peanuts really made me think where I eat and how.
Those urine contaminations are from the guys
Both sexes …. mostly guys on a pub .. but I was waiting at Selfridge’s lady rooms, London one afternoon and I would say may 25% of woman washed their hands and 60% of the once use little water on their fingers.
Which is exactly why I don’t eat fast food.
It must be hard to resist, with all of them around us. But very well done, if we don’t patronize them they’ll run out of business eventually
Reblogged this on unprocessedginger and commented:
How many times do we need to read these articles before we decide to change our lives?
I hope this one will change someone for the better. Thanks for reblogging!
i have actually quit going to certain restaurants because they care more about thier dollar than my well being
Exactly! Do you have related experiences with certain restaurants?
yes i do. the biggest experience is the all time fav and well known mcdonalds. the diet is full of fat. have u ever noticed the high percentage of workers that are heavy? the bathrooms are generally unclean, booths and tables need to be wiped. i would rather spend a few more dollars for cleanliness, and health wise than go cheap and suffer the price of what goes along with the word cheap
No wonder obesity is prevalent, because fast foods are prevalent too. They serve fats more than anything
Don’t like fast food at all, the closet I get is Paneras. Interesting post as yesterday I was reading about poeple with allergies to chocolate, which stated they weren’t allergic to the chocolate per se as the cockroach elements left in it….yum 🙂
Oh GOD. Even the sealed chocolates have those elements? I’m a chocoholic, you’re killing me Claire 🙂
Bravo! Thank you so much for sharing. Frankly, I’m not at all surprised. It’s so important for people to get this information out so the public can choose to make their own informed decisions as to what they are willing to expose themselves to, and their children. Only then will the food industry be forced to change their ways. Supply and demand, my friends.
The change of the food industry will start with the change within us. I like the economics touch in your comment, thanks a bunch Erika!
Thanks for the condensed reminder and for totally grossing me out! – LOL I literally feel nauseous when I think of all the fast food I ate as a teenager……….yuck! I will share this post and the sources with my teenagers so when their once-a-month Wendy’s fastfood urge arises, hopefully it will quickly die.
I take total pleasure in grossing you out. I hope it’ll gross your teenagers too 😉 Let me know
Will do (smile!)
After reading your post, my teens were grossed out too, but my 11 year old said she is not grossed out that easily…..excuse us! – smile. However after reading the information from the other sources as well, she was grossed out enough to say they need to cut back even further on the once-per-month Wendys, substituting more homemade turkey burgers and occasional homemade beef burgers once they have pickles and are shaped like Wendy’s burgers….go figure!!…..So your post can be credited with pushing them even further into a healthier lifestyle…….yaaay!
Woohooooo!! I’m proud of those guys, and this made my day HAHA
Thank you so much for all of this info. This is exactly what i have been learning over the past cpl of weeks, and while i used to have a chzbrgr once in.a while, i have sworn them off 100% after simply seeing Food, Inc. Awesome post…. And this is simply educational, not even to evoke fear or discust.. tho that is the truth at the end of the day…
Oh you’ve seen Food, Inc. as well? So you get that part with cows meat being crumpled together. That struck me hard
yes…… and that killed any craving i could ever have of burgers from fast food — and explains why they make you feel sick after eating them (one should feel FULL, not SICK! -there’s quite a difference). Recently also watched Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, which turned me on to possibly going a juicing route for much needed nutrients that we do not typically get on a daily basis. It’s very interesting to me the “food pyramid” and a) who designed it b) why it isn’t actually turned on it’s head to have the most important food group (and that which we should consume most of…) at the top : )
My parents are crazy about vitamins just so we get apt nutrients everyday. Up to now I still receive bulks from them, geez. About the food pyramid, I think the ones on top are given the least space, meaning you only need very few consumption from that group like fats and sweets 🙂
Brilliantly scary
That’s what I’m aiming for 🙂 Thanks Michael
Well, this information will certainly help me stick to my diet! Yuck! I have heard parts of this before, but the entire picture is certainly condemning and very disgusting!
That’s good then. Sometimes it’ll do if we know so much. Thanks Jodie for visiting Moment Matters!
We dpo have to make good choices. 🙂
True, thanks Luisa
LOVE this post!
I owned a Cafe for a couple of years, and let me tell you that even when you train people in sanitation, if you turn your back they will do things the easy, sloppy way! When i sat for my SerSafe exam, they showed us films taken in restaurant kitchens by hidden cameras … OMG! You would never eat out again.
Oooh tell me, what have they caught in the film?
Kids working in pizza parlors combing their hair over the dough, workers at a buffet style place swatting flies over the salad bar, rats in the kitchens climbing on bags of produce and pooping! AAaaaaahh… you get the picture. 😦
you don’t really know what’s happening inside
Great post…I work at a Jimmy Johns right now…even though they are pretty good…and I live in an area where most of the people (even the young ones) still believe in ol fashioned stuff like washin yer hands, and followin rules…we get produce from a wide variety of sources and have had numerous occasion where the sprouts, peppers, lettuce, onions have all had to be tossed because warnings comin from the supplier about issue in processing…JJ’s has stopped serving sprouts fer this reason….
Then we have equipment…we have a pretty clean restaurant….but just one example…that damn ice machine…it is almost impossible to keep the mold out without breaking the whole apparatus apart on a weekly basis….I have seen enough mold in ice now to not get ice when I do have a little drink at work…and like I said, we have a pretty good crew…so I am super paranoid about gettin drinks out now too(next time yer at a yer local ff joint check out the quality employees)…oh it is to laugh
People believe that the city health inspections really mean the restaurant is clean…but just like the food industry has a wide latitude in standards, a 93% score on a health inspectors sheet does not guarantee that restaurant is “clean”. Like cooktocure I’ve sat through Servsafe training and helped open a training kitchen for a non-profit organization. I was shocked when I met with the city health inspector and he explained how the system worked and how our kitchen we were opening was “almost” up to code….(holes in the wall, grease on every surface, cockroaches in the ceiling)…
Anyway…when yer talkin fresh food, yer talkin food you’ve grown and prepped yerself…?Otherwise now you’ll have to start blogging about the American food industry as a whole…lol.
Thanks, funny, gross and informative…
Blogging about the American food industry will take tremendous research, don’t want to even think about it haha! Lawn grown food is the freshest, yeah, but it’s almost an impossibility with our highly industrialized society.
Thanks for sharing and the scope of information!
Good information! I will never order ice with my drinks again! 🙂
This is brilliant.. Food Inc made me sick.. Thanks for the info though!
Reblogged this on sonofaud.
fantastic, thanks for reblogging! So many sources telling us the real deal right?
Precisely! I am an international student studying in the US, (from South Africa) and since moving here I haven’t enjoyed food nearly as much. However that probably has more to do with cafeteria food. Thanks again!
Egads – this will stick with me for a while – information is a great motivator.
Thanks, and I like your statement there! #readytochangenow
This is SOOOOO hard to do! I have kids in sports & we are always traveling out of state for tournaments. Now what? Arrgh! Very good information, though!
I was hoping with all the recent hype about the pink goop in meat & the non-meat in Taco Bell’s beef, etc., combined with consumer awareness… that it was causing fast food chains to improve the quality of their food. Not true???
I will definitely post a link to this, because people need to be more aware of what they are getting themselves into when eating out!
These chains know how to fight back. And I know, it’s difficult; especially not having ice on your cola 🙂 But awareness aimed for good, that’s great. thanks Jenni!
I always wondered about those berries. Thanks for your like!
Yeah? I’m not always a berry guy, but do they taste authentic nowadays?
I doubt they do. The cereals containing them were part of a promotion I received as an innkeeper back about 2005 — serve the guests something they like, and they will hopefully buy the product. Now I only eat Post Shredded Wheatn’Bran, which seems to be the one cereal that has no added sweeteners or salt. Of course BHT is added to the packaging material.
The tricks pulled on us by the labels on food are awful. I sadly started really taking a closer look about five years ago. All nutrition labels are subject to be read now! I was always a cook at home mom with limited restaurant visits. I knew what went into my recipes and what my family was eating. I know look for sugars and sodium on the labels of everything I buy. My family does not need the extra due to health issues. Thanks for the post.
Peach State
I typically look for the calories count on labels, but that too may be misleading right? Anything else should I watch out in labels?
I watch for sodium and sugar and the carbs… If these counts are high…it goes back on the shelf. I have started using more spices to cook instead of salt and make my sauces from scratch instead of using prepared sauces and gravies. My family do not need the extra sodium and sugars. Hope this helps!
Peach State
Now that I passed the stage where calories freaked me out, it’s time to look out for sodium and carbs too. Thanks, this helped!!
I am glad!
Have a great day!
You too!
Yikes – I knew fast food was not good, but I didn’t think it was this bad!! I’ll give the occasional visit a miss in future!! Thanks for stopping by at my blog and in turn introducing me to yours!
They’re always on the move to keep it secret. Well thanks you too, I hope there’s more in this blog that interests you 😉
Those days when the tragedy that struck Mindanao, Philippines was still sooo fresh, almost every food chain and restaurant here in our city is running low on food. Seafoods are completely unavailable, chicken, beef, and pork are limited. Some parts were running low on water while others don’t really have any water. Every household was a mess and the city was in utter chaos. Naturally, you’d look for a clean place to dine and go. We chanced upon the only restaurant in the mall that wasn’t full. While waiting for our orders, this plump cockroach was resting on the next table, staring at us. Then there was another who scurried along the sofa….and that was the last time that we ever set foot in that establishment.
Another time, this famous food chain who specializes in pizzas, served a local favorite with PUBIC HAIR as one of the toppings.
Delicious baked goods from this certain local bakery. Apparently the baker also uses cockroach eggs as part of the overall batter.
Utterly Disgusting!!! Just about enough reason to make your own food! Nothing beats home-cooked goodies – healthy and CLEAN.
I know there’s still muted chaos in certain areas of Mindanao, I wish for peace in their land.
Everything cockroach-related make my gastric juices squirm, but that one with cockroach eggs is the most nauseating so far! Geez
You gotta name the famous fast food chain that specializes in pizza, come on!
haha! no, no. I won’t ever do that. see, I just want to encourage people to eat right and healthy. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s names or whatever. I only wish that they would be more aware.
I know, your intention’s noble. But since you brought it up, I got scratchy, I need to know haha! Email me please? 😀
it’s a local resto. =)
momentmatters@yahoo.com 😉
it’s a local resto. what’s your
Thanks for your concern. =) Mindanao is a very beautiful place.
I never eat fast food, and don’t understand why anybody does. It is really a waste of money: salt and unhealthy fat……
Indeed, but for people like me who has faced cooking as a challenge, fast foods are convenience. But these facts told us we shouldn’t
Love this post..Gonna keep following you..
I appreciate that, thanks!
excellent put up, very informative. I’m wondering why the opposite specialists of this sector do not notice this. You must proceed your writing. I’m confident, you’ve a great readers’ base already!
Documentaries like Food Inc. and Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead really changed my perception on what I eat.
The fact that chickens go through an ammonia wash and beef has an ammonia filler really made me wary of what to buy in the grocery store.
We use that stuff in hair color. Yuck.
Thanks for posting 😀