Ever since I can remember, I have always loved Taco Bell. I still do love Taco Bell. When it comes to fast food, it will always be number one in my heart. Despite all the warnings against eating fast food, I have never been able to resist it. McDonalds and Burger King have recently been ruled out of my diet, but sometimes I get a craving and have to stop into TB for a grilled stuffed burrito, chicken quesadilla, and a bucket of Pepsi. I need you to understand this before you read the following. I adore Taco Bell. I will probably never stop adoring Taco Bell. I’m not trying to tell you what to eat, or expose you to the harsh cruelty that is the fast food industry. I simply am curious where my food comes from. I think it’s something that most people should wonder.
I have always been curious about the rumors that Taco Bell uses “Grade-D” meat. You know, that whole thing where cat food uses “Grade-C” meat, so eating Taco Bell is far worse than eating cat food. I decided to do as much research as I could find out if these rumors were true, or just a made up story to destroy children’s love for good ol’ TB.
Grade-D Meat? Come on, John…
For starters, I’m completely aware that there is no such thing as “Grade-D” meat. If we’re talking about beef, the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) doesn’t even use letter grades. There’s no such thing as Grade A beef, or Grade F beef. The inspection and grading of meat and poultry are two separate programs within the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA). Inspection for wholesomeness is mandatory and is paid for out of tax dollars. Grading for quality is voluntary, and the service is requested and paid for by meat and poultry producers/processors.
Since the Federal inspection program began at the turn of the century, the meat and poultry industries have grown and changed significantly. In the early 1900’s, most meat came from local slaughter plants and was used locally. Further processing was limited to simple products such as sausages. Today, with the increase in fast food and other meat industries, a wide variety of meat and poultry products are on the market. Animals are slaughtered and meat is processed in sophisticated, high-volume plants. The meat is often shipped great distances to reach consumers.
After the meat and poultry are inspected for wholesomeness, producers and processors may request to have the products graded for quality by a licensed Federal grader. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service is the agency responsible for grading the beef. Those who request grading must pay for the service. Grading for quality means the evaluation of the meat such as tenderness, juiciness, and flavor of meat.
USDA grades are based on nationally uniform Federal standards of quality. No matter where or when a consumer purchases graded meat or poultry, it must have met the same grade criteria. The grade is stamped on the carcass or side of beef and is usually not visible on retail cuts. However, retail packages of beef will show the U.S. grade mark if they have been officially graded.
Prime grade is produced from young, well-fed beef cattle. It has abundant marbling and is generally sold in restaurants and hotels. Prime roasts and steaks are excellent for dry-heat cooking (broiling, roasting, or grilling).
Choice grade is high quality, but has less marbling than Prime. Choice roasts and steaks from the loin and rib will be very tender, juicy, and flavorful and are, like Prime, suited to dry-heat cooking. Many of the less tender cuts, such as those from the rump, round, and blade chuck, can also be cooked with dry heat if not overcooked. Such cuts will be most tender if “braised” — roasted, or simmered with a small amount of liquid in a tightly covered pan.
Select grade is very uniform in quality and normally leaner than the higher grades. It is fairly tender, but, because it has less marbling, it may lack some of the juiciness and flavor of the higher grades. Only the tender cuts (loin, rib, sirloin) should be cooked with dry heat. Other cuts should be marinated before cooking or braised to obtain maximum tenderness and flavor.
Standard and Commercial grades – are frequently sold as ungraded or as “store brand” meat.
Utility, Cutter, and Canner grades are seldom, if ever, sold at retail but are used instead to make ground beef and processed products.
Taco Bell uses “cutter” beef, which is what almost all ground beef is. Basically they grind up the leftover trimmings that didn’t make the best cuts. But, it is all cow meat and by law cannot contain cow organs or tendons or hooves or anything except cow meat. So Taco Bell uses low quality, but perfectly safe ground beef. However, since this stuff isn’t flavorful by itself, so they process the shit out of it by adding ‘natural’ flavoring, salt, sugar, caramel color.
So in summary, there is no such thing as a “Grade-D” beef. Taco Bell does, however, use the lowest quality of meat possible, which also makes it the most affordable. From the information I found, the beef is shipped to locations in 12×8″ clear plastic bags which come in boxes of roughly 20 bags or so. The meat is pre-cooked, and reheated using boiling water. After it’s heated the bag is split open and the meat is put into large metal containers and scooped out as needed.
What about the whole cat food thing?
From what I’ve read, you seriously don’t even want to know what your pet is eating, unless you really do research on what you’re feeding it. Most of the meat put into normal cat food are meat by-products. Seriously, I’m not going into it. Taco Bell for sure uses better meat than what your average cat is getting.
Does Taco Bell beef contain soy?
I did come up with the actual ingredients from the Yum! Brands website and was more surprised to find oats as an ingredient than soy. Here they are.
You may be asking yourself what Soy Lecithin is. Well, Lecithins are oily substances that occur naturally in plants (soybeans) and animals (egg yolks). The soy variety possesses emulsification properties. This means it can keep a candy bar “together” by making sure that the cocoa and the cocoa butter don’t separate. Since soybeans are one of the cheapest crops in the U.S., it makes sense to use a cheap, natural soy derived emulsifier in food processing.
The Soybean Oil is there to do exactly what it says. It reduces the formation of dust during processing and handling
So where does it come from?
I was unable to locate who Taco Bell actually purchases their beef from. This isn’t public information, and I don’t think they’re required to release it. This is something I might keep searching for, so you may hear from me on this topic later on. They do, however, release this statement on their official site:
Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s, and A&W have extremely high food quality and safety standards throughout our entire supply chain. We actively work with our suppliers to raise industry standards. Our rigorous approval process identifies suppliers with proven, outstanding performance in quality control. We expect all of our suppliers to adhere to our strict guidelines so we provide the best possible quality in every meal.
I don’t feel like reading all of that. Just tell me the answer.
Taco Bell does use the lowest possible quality of beef allowed by the USDA., but it’s still a hell of a lot better than what’s in your pet’s bowl. I think another thing that should be taken into account is where the beef is coming from, but I guess that’s just going to have to be for future reading.
In the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel performed a series of tests on preschoolers referred to as The Marshmallow Tests. Mischel would give a child a single marshmallow, then leave him or her alone in the room with it. Before he departed, he’d make each kid an offer: if they wanted to, they could eat it immediately — but if they waited for him to return, they’d get two marshmallows. The tests were designed to examine willpower and the mental processes behind delayed gratification. Watching kids go through the experiment can be poignant… and adorable. As a recent New Yorker article on “the secret of self-control” put it:
Footage of these experiments, which were conducted over several years, is poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a little bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can’t see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal.
I’m pretty sure I was like this when I was a kid. In fact, I think I still am! This video makes me want marshmallows…
2nd Place, 2006 Central Illinois International Chili Championship! Matt (in Red) and Todd (in Tigers hat) along with Chili judges and first place winner (on far left). It was rigged!
It’s about time I fessed up. Back in 2006, my friend Matt and I entered the Urbana Beer and Chili Festival (Urbana, IL – my old stompin’ grounds) in an attempt to unseat the hitherto unbeaten Champaign County Democrats. Otherwise known as the Central Illinois International Chili Championship, this competition invites amateur and restaurant competitors to duke it out in the greatest of drinking and chili eating venues – the downtown Urbana, IL parking garage. Set on a windy, mid-fall Saturday, this environment adds the perfect garnishes to the classic, fall football weekend: Chili and lot and lots of beer.
College students handing out beer samples to their friends and taking purchased tickets. If that isn't a conflict of interest, then I don't know what is
For those of you poor souls who haven’t attended a Chili cookoff, they typically begin with competitors checking in, setting up their booths, passing health inspection, and finally – making their chili in a set period of time. We had 4 hours to prep and cook, in which we were to make 4 gallons of chili for attendees to sample along with several hundred types of beer bought with donations from local business. A portion of the gate went to charity (it’s good to give back! – name that movie quote).
Although I’m not bitter…*whatsoever*, the competition functions in the following manner, year after year after year: 1) Competitors make their chili. 2) Around 1000 people sample the chili. The chilis that run out quickly are clearly the crowd favorites, since everyone makes roughly the same amount. 3) The judges then go and pick the best chilis. 4) At this point, the judges write the names of the best chilis on a piece of paper. 5) That piece of paper is then set on fire, after which the judges piss on the will of the people, and again give the victory to the Champaign County Democrats (the two party system? ”The after party is the one you really want to attend”). Year after year, people! For Godsake, their chili tastes like its been blended! BLENDED!! Who does that?! We ran out of our chili in like 2 hours, and they were still trying to unload their mush practically until dawn! Anyway, we came in Second. Booo! Now that I got that out of my system…
Making good chili, especially 4 gallons of chili, is a long process. First, you’ve got to practice – you must refine your recipe. In the case of chili, this can be expensive, depending on the type of meat you want to use. We got ours from the University of Illinois meat lab. That’s right – for those of you who live in the U.S. near land grant schools (state colleges that have agriculture programs), many animal science programs have meat labs where they train students to butcher. This is an awesome place to get a rediculous amount of meat for cheap.
Sometimes, the word “ridiculous” can be relative. For the competition, we got around 16 pounds of bottom round steak. 16 pounds – that’s 256 oz of delicious steak. Even Joey Chestnut couldn’t put that down. Only problem – it came somewhat frozen.
Todd’s Chili Lesson #1: DO NOT try to cut 16 pounds of slightly frozen steak into 1 inch cubes with a dull knife. Or any kind of knife. Just throw your hand in front of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick – it will happen faster and feel the same.
My recipe [which I will reveal for the first time to the world in a future post - so stay tuned!], also calls for a lot of diced vegetables. During a Chili competition, when many groups quadruple (or more) their normal recipe sizes, this means a LOT of diced vegetables. When you’re in an outdoor booth with crapola, dull Ikea knives…surrounded by shit talking competitors…with a huge cooler of beer waiting for you after prep – dicing is no longer fun. At all.
Todd’s Chili Lesson #2: Find a restaurant supply store and purchase bagged, pre-diced vegetables. This is usually still legit to use in the competition – you can’t pre-cut any veggies on your own and bring them in your own bag, but you can bring pre-cut veggies in a package from a store…damn health inspectors. Hatred is crying into the blisters you got from dicing veggies, while watching (out of your one, remaining good eye) the guy next door slowly pour a giant sack of perfectly diced onion into his Chili, as he enjoys a tall, cool Budweiser.
Now that we’ve prepped the Chili – it’s time to get cookin’. At our competition, we had to bring our own cooking devices. As we were both poor college students at the time, we bought 3 portable electric burners off of Amazon.com (3 massive pots=about 4 gallons). Many of the characters we were competing against simply brought turkey fryers and a few propane tanks. We later realized that those people were very, very, very smart. That’s right: Competitors = Smart. Todd = Dumb.
Todd’s Chili Lesson #3: Test your cooking devices. Having an electric burner is actually a fairly smart idea. You can leave it on for several hours without having propane problems. It’s also a really really cheap alternative. HOWEVER – be sure to understand the electrical network on which your burners will rely. We found out about 15 minutes into cooking that two of our burners were not heating up enough. We were basically maxing out the system. That’s right – the Chili competition was reliant on TWO circuits for our entire section. Whoops! Got it figured out, but it killed our momentum, our confidence, and our buzz. Would have helped to know more ahead of time.
In the end, the competition went incredibly well. After our few preparation hiccups, we got things cooking and our well devised recipe and practice preparations served us well. Have confidence in your burners. Chili has to be a certain temperature to be served to the public. We spent the first hour worrying if we could even get it hot enough to serve – the electrical problem didn’t help! After things heated up, we were almost worried that our chili would get TOO hot. Things might have been worse if we hadn’t been cooling off with a steady stream of liquid anxiety treatments…
Todd’s Chili Lesson #4: Bring ample libations. You’re cooking chili, not curing polio. If you don’t have enough confidence in your chili that you can’t cook it slightly fuzzy faced, then you just haven’t done your homework. You let down yourself, your competitors, and most of all…your Chili.
The final lesson in all of this – it’s all in the marketing. Give your chili a personality. Give it a brand! Make it unique and people will want to come to your booth to try it. If they like it, they will make their friends come and try it too. And, as we all know – after everyone has 2 or 3 or 8 beers in them, they will certainly want to try a lot more. This gives us our final lesson:
Todd’s Chili Lesson #5: Decorate! Decorate your booth, decorate yourself. We did not do this. After quickly following lesson #4, we might have THOUGHT we decorated (liquid confidence). In reality, however, we certainly did not.
Second place team. Other than our award winning personalities, we brought no decorations. You must give your Chili a persona!
This sore sight contrasts heavily with the third place team (also people’s choice winners) who really justified their decorations by making one of the spiciest chilis that I’ve ever tasted. They were also right next to us, which is why there is all that caution tape in the background of our photo. Brilliant!
Third place team. Personality, decorations (even brought chili plants!), and one hell of a spicy chili! Unfortunately, this team also actually blended their chili - something that was strangely uncomfortable to watch. Maybe that's why their booth was wrapped in caution tape...
Many chain food establishments are named after people, and I often find myself wondering who the hell these people are and are they pissed that their restaurants are serving terribly mass produced food? Maybe some people don’t have the wandering curiosity that I do, but these kind of things pop into my head. I decided to look into who a few of these people are.
Max & Erma’s
If Max could see this now, he would be pissed
Founders: Max and Erma Visocnik
The building that housed Max & Erma’s was built in 1889 by a brewing company. In 1958, Max and Erma Visocnik acquired the property and operated a bar catering to railroad and brewery workers. Intending to start a gourmet hamburger restaurant, Columbus businessmen Todd Barnum and Barry Zacks purchased the place from the Visocniks in 1972. Barnum and Zacks sketched out an agreement on a cocktail napkin in 1972 to purchase the bar from Max and Erma Visocnik, on the condition that Max would be allowed to drink free draft beer for the rest of his life After several months of renovation and redecorating, Barnum and Zacks opened their new restaurant but kept the old name: Max & Erma’s.
Wendy’s
Founder: Dave Thomas
Now I know that Wendy wasn’t really responsible for the fast food chain, Dave Thomas is. However, I wondered for years who this hideous looking red haired girl was on all of the signs. She’s the step-daughter you never want. Her actual name is Melina Lou Morse, former Melina Lou Thomas, and was Dave Thomas’ fourth born child. When Dave Thomas opened his first Wendy’s in Columbus, Ohio, he named the hamburger restaurant in honor of her. Wendy was a nickname given to Melinda Lou by her four siblings, and came to be the name that she preferred for herself. Within a few years, Wendy’s restaurants, and the image of eight-year old Wendy herself, became synonymous with the resturaunt. Wendy actually owned several of the restaurants in the Dallas area until 1999. Following Dave’s death in 2002, she entered the corporate side of the company and became more involved in the business side.
Bill Knapp’s
Bill Knapp's gravestone. It was the only thing I could find!
Founder: Bill Knapp, real name Clinton B. Knapp
Bill Knapp’s was a Michigan chain that closed down several years ago. I used to go there simply for the bean with bacon soup. It was off the jam. Bill Knapp was a traveling salesman in Cleveland who also enjoyed cooking and baking. Traveling so much, Knapp was always on the lookout for a good place to eat a meal. In 1947, the Knapp family moved to Battle Creek, where Knapp took a job with Shaefer Bakeries. But in the evenings at home, he worked on his concept for a new type of restaurant chain, including trying out various food dishes. His restaurant concept was simple and direct: Provide really good food, serve it quickly, and keep it reasonably priced.
He scraped together $10,000 along with four other local investors. The first Bill Knapp’s Restaurant opened in 1948 in Columbia, Michigan. Knapp’s concept was a hit. He soon opened a second restaurant in downtown Columbia, and by 1955 had three restaurants in Battle Creek, MI and others in Lansing, MI and Kalamazoo, MI. Knapp preferred to hire and train restaurant employees “from scratch,” Hill said, and he preferred they didn’t have previous restaurant experience. The restaurant chain began begin running into some financial issues in the 1990’s after not expanding.
Part of the reason Knapp’s had not expanded as a business is that its clientele remained mostly the same since 1948, and were sadly expiring, often in Bill Knapp’s restaurants. Some refer to it as a God’s Waiting Room or the Senior City. Ok, that was mean. Sorry. That’s not the reason it failed.
First, there was the disastrous attempt to reposition the place to appeal to the missing young adults, with clashing paint colors, video games, loud music, and a dumb new slogan of “That was then — this is wow!” They drove away their core customers and (no surprise) failed to attract any young people.
Then sanity returned. The management scrambled — with obviously heartfelt apologies — to return to the old Bill Knapps and undo the damage. And the old customer base flocked back.
But restaurants operate on a thin profit margin. Revenue was back up again, but the months of losses had built a mountain of debt. So they went into Chapter 11 reorganization.
Wham! With news of the bankruptcy filing, all those “loyal customers” suddenly fled. Revenue dropped through the floor, and Bill Knapps was finished. Liquidation followed.
Carl’s Jr
Founder: Carl Karcher
Carl Karcher dropped out of school after eighth grade to work on the farm where his father was a sharecropper. At 20, an uncle offered him work at his Karcher’s Feed and Seed Store in downtown Anaheim, where the young man was later offered a job by a customer who owned a bakery. Delivering baked goods, Karcher noticed that there were thriving hot dog stands everywhere, and decided there was money to be made selling “fast food”. He borrowed a few hundred dollars against his Plymouth, and purchased his first hot dog stand in 1941. Parked at the corner of Florence and Central in South Central Los Angeles, business boomed, and within a few years he had several hot dog carts. He then he opened his first full-service restaurant, Carl’s Drive-In Barbecue, in Anaheim in 1945. Eventually, Carl’s added hamburgers at several new, smaller locations, with the new restaurants dubbed Carl’s Jr. because they were scaled-down, smaller versions of Karcher’s first restaurant.
Devoutly Catholic, Karcher and his wife raised a dozen children. He often told reporters that he attended morning mass every day before going to the office, and began every company board meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. Karcher was a lifelong member of the Republican Party and a staunch financial supporter of conservative causes. He contributed heavily to anti-abortion groups, and was the largest single contributor to a 1978 ballot initiative in California that would have required public schools in California to fire any teachers known to be gay or lesbian. To gauge how far on the conservative extreme Karcher was, the initiative failed after former Governor and soon-to-be President Ronald Reagan came out against it, citing it as too intrusive.
The late 1980s and 1990s brought trouble early-on and success later. Carl’s Jr. chains had struggled to gain success in Arizona and Texas, perhaps diminishing hopes of expansion to other states, though later states like Nevada, Oregon and Washington proved successful. During the 1990s Karcher and the Board of Directors began clashing over marketing and business practices, including the chain’s attempt at dual branding with such chains as The Green Burrito, which led to Karcher’s ousting as Chief Executive Officer in 1993. Soon after, the Board of Directors took a new approach by cutting the menu, lowering prices, and introducing a new marketing campaign which targeted younger urban and suburban males. During this time, commercials for Carl’s Jr. featured an animated caricature of Carl Karcher and the chain’s mascot, Happy Star.
Jimmy John’s
Founder: Jimmy John Liautaud
After founder Jimmy John Liautaud graduated second to last in his class from Elgin Academyin 1982, his options were joining the Army or starting a business. He chose to start a business. Inspired by Portillo’s, Liautaud’s father lent him $25,000 to start his own hot dog business. If the business was successful, Liautaud would own 52% of it and his father would own 48%. If it failed, he would join the Army.
After Liautaud realized starting a hot dog business would cost nearly twice the amount of the loan, he decided to open a sandwich shop instead. A nearby neighbor told Liautaud that the secret of a successful sandwich was in the bread. He started baking bread in his mother’s kitchen, bought the most expensive meats from Dominick’s, and had family members vote on the best four sandwiches (out of six) he created.
The first Jimmy John’s opened in a garage in Charleston, Illinois on January 13, 1983 with used equipment and no menu or outdoor advertisement, simply selling the four sandwiches and 25-cent Cokes. After giving samples out around town, his business began to thrive. He especially catered to college students at Eastern Illinois University. After two friends backed out as managers, he ran the store himself for the first few years, working seven days a week from open to close.
In April 1985, he bought out his father’s side of the business and became sole owner. He opened his second store in Macomb, Illinois, and, after manager William “Billy” Burns was killed in a car accident, he ran the second store himself for a few months. Liautaud went on to honor Burns by naming the “Billy Club” sandwich after him, which remains on the menu to this day. He would later open several more stores, and he developed a prototype before franchising began in 1993.
Tim Horton’s
Founder: Tim Horton
The chain’s first store opened in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario under the name “Tim Horton Donuts” (the name later being abbreviated to “Tim Horton’s”, and later still changed to “Tim Hortons” without the possessive apostrophe). The business was founded by Tim Horton, who played in the National Hockey League from 1949 until his death in a car accident in 1974.
Soon after Horton opened the store, he met Ron Joyce, a former Hamilton police constable. In 1965, Joyce took over the fledgling Tim Horton Donut Shop on Ottawa Street North in Hamilton. By 1967, after he had opened up two more stores, he and Tim Horton became full partners in the business. Upon Horton’s death in 1974, Joyce bought out the Horton family and took over as sole owner of the existing chain of forty stores. Joyce expanded the chain quickly and aggressively in geography and in product selection, opening the 500th store in Aylmer, Quebec, in 1991.
Ron Joyce’s aggressive expansion of the Tim Hortons business resulted in two major changes in the coffee and doughnut restaurant market: independent doughnut shops in Canada were virtually eliminated, and Canada’s per-capita ratio of doughnut shops surpassed those of all other countries.
By the 1990s, the company name had changed to The TDL Group Ltd. This was an effort by the company to diversify the business, removing the primary emphasis on doughnuts. In March 2006, the company went public.
Some older locations retain signage with the company’s name including a possessive apostrophe, despite the fact that the official styling of the company’s name has been Tim Hortons, without an apostrophe, for at least a decade. The company had removed the apostrophe after signs using the apostrophe were considered to be breaking the language sign laws of the Province of Quebec. The removal of the apostrophe allowed the company to have one common sign image across Canada.
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