Tag Archives | Burgers

Burger King Admits To Serving Horse Meat

By on February 1, 2013 in News 19

Photo: Chrisloader (CC)

Now that Burger King has fessed up to serving horse meat in its burger patties, one wonders what other animals made it into its not so delicious offerings. Gawker sums up the scandal:

Though it initially made “absolute assurances” that all of its burgers were 100% beef, Burger King has been forced to admit that some of its patties may have contained horse meat, after traces of equine DNA were found at one of their processing plants.

The scandal started two weeks ago, when supermarket chains in the UK and Ireland began pulling certain beefburger products off the shelf after test concluded that they contained varying amounts of horse meat.

The tainted product was traced back to three processing plants, one of which — Silvercreft Foods — supplies Burger King restaurants in both the UK and Ireland with some of their patties.

“Our independent DNA test results on product taken from restaurants were negative for any equine DNA,” the company said in a statement.

… Read the rest

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Mummies Made Out Of McDonald’s Food

By on April 27, 2012 in News 11

Via Kickstarter, a West Texan artist named Ben is raising funds to construct more of his specialty: an army of life-size mummies made from McDonald’s burgers. He draws a murky connection between the obsession with immortality shared by ancient Egyptians and our society, and the fact that McDonald’s meat never decays. Personally I like the McDonald’s mummies because they seem to represent the dark corners of Americana culture sprung to life in monstrous form, ready to wreak vengeance:

mummy… Read the rest

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Burgers Made From Lab-Grown Meat

By on February 20, 2012 in News 74
Photo: dweekly (CC)

Photo: dweekly (CC)

I know — yuk! — but chances are airlines and other purveyors of gross burgers like the one at right won’t have any qualms about using synthetic meat if the price is lower than real meat. Pallab Ghosh reports for BBC News:

Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year.

The aim of the research is to develop a more efficient way of producing meat than rearing animals.

At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%.

“We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources,” he said.

Professor Post’s group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.

They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in appearance.

… Read the rest

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McDonald’s Discontinues Use Of ‘Pink Slime’ In Burgers

By on January 11, 2012 in News 59

slimeburgerNo more slimeburgers? Until recently, 70 percent of burgers in the United States contained “pink slime”, also known as ammoniated boneless lean beef trimmings, a cheap beef filling unfit for consumption until it is gassed with ammonia. Now McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King are dropping the magic additive following a campaign of withering criticism from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Via the Argus Leader:

McDonald’s and two other fast-food chains have stopped using an ammonia-treated burger ingredient that meat industry critics deride as “pink slime.” The product remains widely used as beef filling in burger meat, including in school meals.

The beef is processed by Beef Products Inc. in Iowa and in three other states. One of the company’s chief innovations is to cleanse the beef of E. coli bacteria and other dangerous microbes by treating it with ammonium hydroxide.

“Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs, and after this process we can give it to humans,” food activist Jamie Oliver said in a segment of his ABC television show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, that aired last spring.

… Read the rest

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A Happy Meal 137 Days Later

By on September 10, 2010 in News 15

Artist Sally Davies runs the classic, terrifying “McDonald’s burger time-lapse” experiment. The goal of course is to see how long it takes food from McDonald’s to alter in appearance even the slightest bit. At 137 days and counting, this meal looks identical to how it did at the time of purchase. Via Refinery 29:

happy-meal-day-137… Read the rest

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The $1200 Burger

By on June 8, 2010 in News 4

hamburgerHere in burger-mad New York City, seemingly every year there is an outcry over the latest celebrity chef’s outlandishly expensive creation billed as a burger but usually having little in common with the American classic (e.g. Daniel Boulud’s “Royale,” stuffed with red wine-braised short ribs (off the bone), foie gras, a mix of root vegetables and preserved black truffle, for $120). We’ve been trumped, though, by some Aussies, as reported by Reuters:

An Australian cafe is claiming a world record after cooking a giant hamburger with an 81 kg (178 lb) patty that took 12 hours to cook and four men to flip.

The monster burger cooked up by Sydney cafe owners, Joe and Iman El-Ajouz, weighed in at 90 kg in total, eclipsing the previous record of 84 kg, set in Michigan in the United States….

The giant burger contained the giant beef patty, 120 eggs, 150 slices of cheese, 1.5 kg of beetroot, 2.5 kg of tomatoes and almost 2 kg of lettuce all topped off with a special sauce on a giant sesame seed bun.

… Read the rest

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