Top 10 Fast Food Rumours That Turned Out To Be True

What came first, the chicken or the… egg sandwich? While this treat is a staple on most fast food menus, the eggs used in these meals can be more processed than you’d like to imagine. Rumors have claimed that McDonald’s uses fake eggs in their sandwiches, but this is untrue. They use real eggs, along with preservatives, which used to be prepared in liquid margarine, until the company switched to butter. But some companies do add various other hard-to-pronounce ingredients. For example, the egg omelet at Subway includes a “premium egg blend” that contains propylene glycol - a liquid used in antifreeze that’s common in packaged foods. If you just want eggs in your eggs, you’re better off preparing them at home.

Legend has it that if you leave Chicken McNuggets out for too long, they won’t just warm up– they’ll completely melt into a puddle. We can’t confirm this ourselves, but there is a possible explanation for this claim. McDonald’s nuggets are breaded white chicken meat, along with some other ingredients, which we’ll get into later. But what’s important for this entry is that, according to “Eat This, Not That”, many of the ingredients are water based binding agents, which could apparently cause the nuggets to break down when left out in the elements. Does anyone want to grab a spoon?

If you’re at the drive through line and think you’re making a good choice by choosing a salad, you’re certainly not alone. However, that salad may be just as unhealthy as a cheeseburger and fries. It sounds impossible, but hear us out! If you take a close look at the calorie count on the various salads from popular fast food restaurants– especially if you’re adding creamy dressings and crispy chicken– it may really shock you. Not to mention the intense amounts of sodium that these meals can have in them!

Sure, selling expired meat isn’t the norm, but this case still freaks us out. In 2014, local reporters caught workers at a factory in Shanghai, China, repackaging expired beef and chicken. Some of the meat was a year past its expiration date! Reporters also filmed workers throwing food that had fallen on the floor into processing machines. The supplier provided meat to McDonald’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut in China. A Chinese court issued millions in fines, and sentenced 10 employees to jail time. Factory owner OSI Group, an American company based in Aurora, Illinois, declared the verdict unjust. Maybe they were just hangry. Care for some expired meat?

Calories aren’t bad! A calorie is a unit of energy, and you need energy to live. All foods have calories! In fact, that’s kind of what makes it food. However, eating not enough, or too many calories, can be unhealthy. A 2013 study from Harvard Medical School found that participants underestimated the calorie content of fast food. Depending on various factors, most people require between 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day. Some fast food meals, especially trios, actually contain over 2,000 calories! As of 2018, major fast food chains in the U.S. have to list calories on menus. It’s a good idea to pay attention to them!

Processed foods might be convenient, but are often loaded with salt, sugar, preservatives and additives. We already mentioned propylene glycol, but the additives certainly don’t end there. Over 10,000 additives are allowed in the United States; some are banned overseas. For example, potassium bromate, which is used as a flour improver, has been linked in animal studies to cancerous tumors, and is banned in Canada, the UK, and EU. Another common additive is TBHQ, used to prevent spoilage in oils and fats; some studies have found that very high doses are carcinogenic, although other studies have concluded the opposite. When it comes to additives, one fast food treat isn’t going to kill you. But there are lots of reasons not to recommend over-consumption.

If you say ‘nay’ to eating horse meat, well, it may already be too late. Especially if you’ve eaten at Taco Bell’s in the UK! In 2013, scandal rocked Europe’s food industry as investigations discovered horse meat in various ‘beef’ products. In some cases, horse meat made up only a small percentage of the product, but in others, it made up 100%! In Taco Bell’s case, the scandal only affected three outlets in Britain. Taco Bell quickly apologized and stopped selling ground beef from that supplier. Apparently, the product never hit their United States chains– so American eaters, you seem to be in the clear!

Are Chicken McNuggets made out of gross pink slime? No, they are not! Sorry, McDonald’s truthers. The main ingredient is white boneless chicken. In 2016, McDonald’s removed artificial preservatives from the cooking oil used for McNuggets. Until then, listed ingredients had included the additives dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent, and TBHQ, which we mentioned earlier in the list. McNuggets do however contain many other ingredients - around 40. A lot of this comes from the batter, which includes various leaving agents.

Who knew potatoes weren’t vegetarian? Well– they are, but not when you deep fry them in beef fat. This is exactly what McDonald’s was blamed for doing in the US and Canada. In 1990, they had announced that they were switching from beef fat to vegetable oil, but continued to use beef for flavoring purposes. In the early 2000s, several vegetarians and Hindus, who don’t eat beef for religious reasons, filed a lawsuit against the fast food company. McDonald’s apologized, and ended up settling the lawsuit, donating $10 million to vegetarian and religious groups.

Do McDonald’s burgers never rot? This rumor has been swirling around for quite some time, after folks noticed their abandoned meals held up suspiciously well. The reason that this phenomenon occurs doesn’t have anything to do with the chemicals used in the cooking process, but is instead due to burger’s preparation as well as the heat conditions of where it is left out. By the time the burger is served, it is already pretty dry because of all the toasting and steaming. So if you keep it in the open air for a long time, it will continue to dry and harden instead of growing any mold. The more you know!