What’s really in a McDonald’s hamburger?




What’s in a McDonald’s hamburger? A 100% beef patty that’s seasoned with a pinch of salt and pepper, topped with melty cheese, tangy pickles, minced onions, and (of course) ketchup and mustard. Duh.
Sounds pretty good, right? This is how the McDonad’s hamburger is advertised. Sounds simple enough. And from a real food perspective, it sounds… well, real. 

But what’s REALLY is in a McDonald’s hamburger?

Ah, I’m glad you asked. For the real answer, we have to dive a bit deeper. There are a lot of aspects of the McDonald’s menu that they won’t necessarily tell you at first glance. We have to dissect the ingredients to really see what’s hidden behind those Golden Arches.
It might not be information you want to hear if you’re a fan of the fast-food chain, but let’s get started regardless.

The McDonald’s hamburger deconstructed

Ingredients: 100% pure USDA inspected beef; no fillers, no extenders. Prepared with grill seasoning (salt, black pepper).
Thankfully, McDonald’s and several other chains recently stopped using the “pink slime” in their meat patty. But the vast majority of fast food beef comes from CAFO (concentrated agricultural feeding operation) cows. Not only is this horrible for the animals and the environment, but eating meat from sick animals will only make you sick. 
Eat a McDonald’s hamburger and you might be getting a mouth full of antibiotics, hormones, and dangerous bacteria. So while it is “100% beef”, the quality of that beef is another issue altogether.

Regular Bun:

Ingredients: Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, yeast, soybean oil and/or canola oil, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, wheat gluten, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, dough conditioners (may contain one or more of the following: sodium stearoyllactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylatedmonoglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide), sorbic acid, calcium propionate and/or sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin.
Oh boy. Where do I start? How about we just look at the length of this ingredient list. All of this for a bun? Did you know you can make your own bread using just flour, salt, and water? Seriously. The extra 20 – 30 ingredients here is stuff your body doesn’t need.
Lets look at just a few of the above ingredients:
  • Ammonium chloride… sounds tasty right? Did you know it is also an ingredient in fireworks, safety matches and contact explosives? Eat up.
  • Ammonium sulfate is used most commonly as an artificial fertilizer for alkaline soils. It’s also in flame retardant materials. Ammonium sulfate activates yeast, so it helps to get industrially produced bread to rise.
  • The soybean and/or canola oil used here are most likely GMO. They are also foods I generally avoid for a number of reasons.
  • The high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), despite the desperate marketing strategies to persuade otherwise, is not natural. And because it’s in so much of our processed foods, not only is it hard to avoid, but it can be doing major damage to your health.
  • “Enriched” flour sounds harmless enough. But “enriched” just means that all the nutrition was taken out in the first place. Refined flours are also hard for your body to digest, even before the mess of chemicals are added to it.

Ketchup:

Ingredients: Tomato concentrate from red ripe tomatoes, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, salt, natural flavors (vegetable source)
As if HFCS isn’t enough… let’s add some regular corn syrup to the mix! Not to mention that most corn is GMO. Did you know that recently the first long term study on the effects of GMO was released? The part that should freak you out: Massive tumors in rats who are fed GMO corn for two years.

Pasteurized Process American Cheese:

Ingredients: Milk, water, milkfat, cheese culture, sodium citrate, salt, citric acid, sorbic acid (preservative), sodium phosphate, color added, lactic acid, acetic acid, enzymes, soy lecithin (added for slice separation)
Let’s just start with the name. I mean, come on. Cheese is milk’s chance for immortality and “pasteurized process American cheese” just sounds nasty.
Why are we messing with something so good? Pasteurization kills living enzymes. Although in this case it’s probably good since it can also kill the bad stuff that comes from milk from sick cows in horrific factories.
With all the added colors, preservatives, and other “goodies” I think I’ll skip the cheeseburger.
Ultimately, however, it’s not McDonald’s we should be mad at. Nobody is forcing us to eat this garbage. What we need is to help educate people and let them know what they are putting in their bodies. I think Joel Salatin says it well:


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