first of all i feel obligated to tell you that i do in fact work for taco bell. i've only been working there about three months though.
this whole thing is blown pretty out of proportion. [edit--see my next post in this thread. the only people claiming that taco bell's meat is 36% beef are the people that are suing them! since the news article and the lawyers themselves seem to be using cliches about inexpensive fast food to their advantage, let me say this--aren't lawyers usually pretty money/fame hungry?]
the actual ingredients are:
Beef, Water, Seasoning [Isolated Oat Product, Salt, Chili Pepper, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Oats (Wheat), Soy Lecithin, Sugar, Spices, Maltodextrin, Soybean Oil (Anti-dusting Agent), Garlic Powder, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Caramel Color, Cocoa Powder (Processed With Alkali), Silicon Dioxide, Natural Flavors, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Natural Smoke Flavor], Salt, Sodium Phosphates. CONTAINS SOYBEAN, WHEAT
if you didn't know, ingredients lists like this are ordered so the ingredient that makes up the largest portion is first, the second largest portion is second, etc.
the number one ingredient is beef (again, processed to reduce fat content). the second ingredient is WATER. if the third one, oat product, makes you raise an eyebrow then you've gotta be pretty paranoid. i'm pretty sure the isolated oat product is mainly there as a replacement for all that unhealthy beef fat, don't quote me on that though.
the number four ingredient is salt. i'm not sure how much salt is in one portion of beef, but i do know that one hard shell beef taco has 330mg of sodium, or 13% of the recommended daily allowance... and a lot of the sodium in that taco is from the corn taco shell.
i don't have better numbers to use for the following example, so i'm going to use these: a hard taco weighs 78 grams, and the salt content is 330mg. that means a hard taco is 0.4% sodium by weight. if we assume that this4 is roughly the same percentage of sodium in the ground beef alone, then we see that 99.6% of the taco meat filling is made of (primarily) beef, (secondarily) water, and (tertiarily) isolated oat product. this makes it seem to me that the meat filling must not be too unhealthy, unless they do some really crazy shit to that oat.
the rest of the seasonings are pretty typical of most taco beef seasonings (like the packets you can get at the grocery store). the only ingredients that i see that might be eyebrow raising are silicon dioxide and sodium phosphates. sodium phosphate is a preservative. as for silicon dioxide:
I heard a rumor that there's sand in your taco meat
This is completely false. The truth is that what has been referred to as "sand" is in fact silicon dioxide. Silicon dioxide:
is a safe, common food ingredient often used in spices, seasonings, and many restaurant and packaged foods;
is primarily used in food to prevent ingredients from sticking together;
Is a naturally occurring mineral, often found in water, leafy green and root vegetables, cooked dried beans, whole grains, cereals, and fruits;
Can be found in many kitchen pantries across America, often in mashed potato and rice mixes, coffee, soups, and many spices and seasonings;
Is approved for use in food by the Food and Drug Administration here;
Like many in the food business, we use silicon dioxide in the seasonings and spices for our taco meat. When cooked, our beef contains about .0005% (that is, five ten-thousands of one percent) of this ingredient, far less than the FDA limit of 2%. Furthermore, we use certified organic silicon dioxide. It is not artificial and is not a preservative.
i'm vegetarian btw and i don't even eat the beef at taco bell anyway =p i know it seems weird at first that i work at taco bell being vegetarian, but there aren't many jobs in my town. i actually decided to work at taco bell because it is one of, if not the, most vegetarian friendly restaurant around here. you can substitute beans or rice for meat in any of our items at no extra cost. besides the obvious example of meat the only other ingredient we use that isn't vegetarian friendly is our sour cream, which has gelatin in it (a meat byproduct). however, you can substitute vegetarian guacamole instead of sour cream at no extra cost as well.
most fast food restaurants have either one or zero vegetarian items that are actually semi-nutritious. even most up-scale restaurants around here only have a handful of vegetarian items. however, with the meat to beans/rice policy at taco bell there are just as many vegetarian items as non-vegetarian items.