Guess who’s back? It’s Wendy’s and their “Where’s the Beef?” campaign, from the 80’s. Yup, they’re bringing the slogan back, this time to promote their single, double and triple “hot and juicy” burgers. Along with their classic “You Know When it’s Real” jingle, “Where’s the Beef?” returns to the airwaves, minus Clara Pell, the little old lady who made the slogan famous.
But before you take Wendy’s at their word, consider this: The USDA standard for minimum percentage of actual beef in a burger patty is only 40%. That means the rest can be fillers, like soy protein, or oat fiber, and flavors and msg and yeast extracts and all the other things that can fill up the other 66% of the patty. And, 10-12% of that meat can come from “ammoniated beef products”. What is that? Well that is scraps of putrid meat left after processing, that used to be sent to the pet food industry. But the meat industry now treats those scraps with ammonia to bring down the bacterial load enough to make it acceptable for human food processing. So that ammoniated beef product can be added to your burger patty too.
That’s not the beef you thought you were eating. And it’s not real beef. That’s foodiness in your beef.
So you might ask Wendy’s where the beef is, and exactly how real it is.