Where's the Beef?

As I sit in my room watching the Colbert Report I see the Taco Bell headline come across the screen. Colbert described how a lab had taken a sample of Taco Bell's seasoned beef and the test turned up that the "seasoned beef" was actually only 35% beef. Colbert in his usual sarcastic manner said "Let me put it this way: On a scale of one to beef, it's got something in there. But of course it all comes down to government intrusion and its minimum requirements for what can be labeled beef. Who cares what the government says? I say if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, glue some hooves on that thing and call it beef." However funny Colbert can make the situation seem, the reality of it is that we as customers and consumers must do something to stop this. After seeing this the first thing to pop into my mind was the book Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. In this book Pollan attacks the global food industry from the ground up and in the process covers something very similar to this very situation. Pollan talks of how he takes his family for a few and far between lunch at McDonald's and asks his son if the new chicken nuggets taste more like chicken than the previous non "white meat" nuggets. To his surprise his son answers him with the simple statement, "No, they taste like what they are, which is nuggets,". This statement shows how we as consumers have allowed the food in front of us to be so far separated from what it is and what we should be eating in actuality. Pollan goes on to list the staggering number of ingredients in a "McNugget" which is approximately thirty-eight! One of these substances, TBHQ or tertiary butylhydroquinone is an antioxidant derived from petroleum to "help preserve freshness" however ingesting just five grams of the substance can cause death. While Taco Bell has not been accused of putting toxins in their foods the message remains the same, we as consumers must demand better food quality and must seek out to know what exactly is going into our foods! This situation also reminds me of an older slogan used by Wendy's asking "Where's the Beef?", well sadly as we look inside our Taco Bell bags (or many other fast food bags...) we must ask that very same question. It is time for us to take a stand on our food safety we owe not just to our bodies but also to Earth and the environment all around us.