Something Corny About Those Burgers
November 13, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
As if I needed another reason for not taking Charlie to McDonald’s: The November 12th Scientific American gives the not-so-skinny on what’s inside the beef that the likes of the Golden Arches, Burger King, and Wendy use to make their burgers:
Corn.
Further:
If you thought you were eating mostly grass-fed beef when you bit into a Big Mac, think again: The bulk of a fast-food hamburger from McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s is made from cows that eat primarily corn, or so says a new study of the chemical composition of more than 480 fast-food burgers from across the nation.
And it isn’t only cows that are eating corn. There is also evidence of a corn diet in chicken sandwiches, and even French fries get a good slathering of the fat that makes them so tasty from being fried in corn oil.
…….
“Instead of eating a predominantly whole grains, fruits and vegetables, we are diverting the grain supply to feeding the animals,” says [preventive medicine physician Bob Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health], arguing for a diet that treats meat as a garnish rather than the main course and corn for human consumption rather than cows. “Corn-finished beef does add to what has become a preferred taste for the American palate. We’ve acquired that taste at our own peril.”
On the other hand, maybe Charlie’s already onto this. These days, he’s just as likely to say “no” when asked about eating at McDonald’s as he is to say “yes.” Guess he knows what’s good for him, and what not.
That is, yes, we can now drive past the Golden Arches and not have to make a fast dash for fries. Change is always possible.
Effect Measure has more to say about this corn……filled topic.
Purely grass fed beef is a luxury item at our local meat market, so the news that fast food beef is not primarily derived from it is not too surprising. Even when labelled as “grass-fed”, I have to inquire whether the beef is from cows “finished” on grass or whether were they feedlot fed on corn for the last month before slaughter, which maintains some of the environmental advantages but negates some of the health benefits.
(If you are really concerned, make inquiry into buffalo, which I understand has a higher probability of being grass fed from start to finish.)
Corn has become a really strange crop because of heavy allocation to feed crop for species not really evolved to eat it and the investment in gasahol, and corn syrup additives for processed food.
It could be worse–the thing that makes my skin crawl a bit is the recycling of slaughterhouse refuse into herbivore animal feed, and various feed additives to add color or bulk.
We are lucky enough to live in a truck farm area and to really like vegetables (even corn
, when it’s in season), so to some extent we are already following the recommendation to use meat as a sidebar and not the whole show.
Meat is usually a sidebar around here–mostly my doing, not from any moral standpoint (although those issues hover) but because I just get really tired of chewing it.
Grass-fed beef is a luxury item here, too, costing a lot more than regular beef, but we buy it. You can tell the difference.
The corn lobby is…efficient. Very very efficient.
Ahem, I rarely (no pun intended) cook burgers for Charlie (off to the diner for those)……..
Just some more “food” for thought :-/ ,
McMichael, A.J., & Bambrick, H.J.(2005). Invited editorial: Meat consumption trends and health: casting a wider risk assessment net. Public Health Nutrition.
(And I post this as someone who enjoys, on an occasional basis, a nicely done broiled (grass fed) steak ).
Coincidentally, the Discover Channel had a howstuffworks presentation on corn tonight, and it is quite eye opening to view the myriad uses of corn–grain and silage–dent corn in particular, in agricultural, commercial and industrial applications and the related infrastructure, research and manufacturing.
Example:“Products that use corn” and how corn is used in those products.
There’s a fascinating (and somewhat scary) documentary called King Corn that is well worth watching.
Hello friends –
For a scary read, I would recommend ‘The Omnivores Dilema’, and / or ‘Fast Food Nation’. Both discuss the rise of corn to the point of ubiquity in our diets; it isn’t a good thing.
As Regan noted above, corn is being fed to a wide variety of animals that did not evolve to eat it; this is in large part why these animals are pumped with antibiotics, these animals are used to eating ph neutral foods; in order to subsist on a diet of corn and the associated gastrointestinal problems with a different ph, the animals are ‘kept’ healthy.
The prevalance of corn oil and its different omega 6 to omega 3 ratio is also pretty scary stuff; especially if you’ve read about those same profiles in our children.
- pD
Corn for fuel, corn for ducks, corn for humans~
Corn is sure a staple for all things considered.
I used to buy 50 pound bags of corn for the ducks and it cost me ten dollars. That was just a couple years ago.
Now it costs me 13 dollars per 50 pound bag.
Wish my income would go up like everything else does. I feel the squeeze like crazy!