Taco Bell "beef" pseudo-Mexican delicacies are really made a gross mixture called "Taco Meat Filling" as shown on their big container's labels—which customers can't see. The list of ingredients is gruesome:
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.
It looks gruesome but passable-until you learn that 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 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 meatmud correctly labeled as "taco meat filling" in their industrial packaging should be labeled in the same way in all advertising and packaging, following USDA rules. Of course, the All-New Double Decker with Two Times More Taco Meat Filling will not sound very good on TV.
The right to know:
Taco Bell's meat filling looks like ground beef before and after cooking, but it has been augmented with fibers and other substances to keep the price low. That's how they can keep the cost of their food down. And that's fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that process.
The problem here is that the consumers may believe that this "meat filling" is beef, while it's not. If it looks like beef, it's labeled as beef, and it's advertised as beef, then it must be beef. But that substance is not beef. It's just "meat filling". That could deceive the public, which is why there is a class action lawsuit in the works. That's why consumers need to know before making a decision to eat a taco or not, just like they need to know before buying cloned meat or genetically modified vegetables or fish or corn syrup.
The final irony:
The USDA says that any food labeled as "meat taco filling" should at least have 40% fresh meat. According to the Alabama law firm, their stuff only has 36% meat. Perhaps they should call it Almost Taco Meat Filling.
