Fast Food Secrets - AskMen
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      Fast Food Industry Secrets

      Can You Guess The New McDonald's Slogan?

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      There Are Animal By-Products In Milkshakes

      The average strawberry milkshake at a fast food restaurant contains more than 50 different chemicals, many of which could only be deciphered by a scientist. In addition to these four and five-syllable words in the ingredient list, they also contain something called "natural flavoring," which, as aforementioned, may in fact come from nature, but not in the form that you'd expect.

      The Food and Drug Administration insists that in order to claim the use of "natural ingredients" in a food product, ingredients have to be derived from natural sources. Natural sources include herbs, spices, yeast, roots, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, and other animals. Therefore, the natural flavoring in your strawberry shake is probably not strawberry.

      In fact, we learned that many fast food chains do use animal products, like gelatin, to add taste and thickness to their milkshakes.

      There May Be Beef In Your Chicken

      There are many myths that suggest that fast food hamburgers are not really made from beef. Well, we're going to give the fast food chains a little credit here: Most of them are now made with 100% real beef. However, what we've learned is that many chicken products at fast food restaurants also include beef (most notably the nuggets and sandwiches). These alleged chicken meals contain beef products to deliver extra flavor. Hey, it worked with the fries!

      In addition to the part-beef, part-chicken sandwiches, many other products are also likely to be packed with flavor additives to provide extra taste.

      When you order a hickory smoked bacon cheeseburger, it doesn't really come from a hickory barbecue grill outside. Everything in a fast food restaurant is cooked on the same greasy grill, which would logically give everything the same greasy taste.

      So how do they get that rich, smoky taste when everything tastes like oil from the grill? They process the meat with flavor additives. These additives are created by scientists in a lab who can make anything from mesquite BBQ to chipotle ranch simply by mixing a few chemicals together.

      The Guy Who Made Your Burger May Not Have Washed His Hands 

      Dateline NBC
      , the news magazine famous for revealing secrets about big industries, was the first media outlet to do a national survey on the overall cleanliness of fast food chains.

      Dateline journalists went undercover to unearth the dirty truth about the top 10 fast food chains in the nation. After studying a sample of 1,000 restaurants across 38 states, they found that most had at least a few cleanliness violations.

      In their research, the Dateline crew found rodents and insects (alive and dead), grime and debri in several chains. At a Taco Bell in California, a man found a piece of chewing gum in his taco. A customer at Hardee's in Florida was handed a soda with blood dripping from the cup (he was also given back bloody change after he paid for his meal). At a Wendy's in Chicago, inspectors found a dead rodent decaying in a trap in the kitchen area.

      For the dirty truth about cleanliness, allergens and more, read on...

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