There really is everything in a fast food hamburger

Whether it's McDonald's Big Mac, Burger King's Whopper, or White Castle's Sliders, most of us have a favorite fast food hamburger. But possibly because we believe ignorance is bliss, very few of us have taken the time to learn what's in them. You know, besides the special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, and cheese, pickles, onions, and whopper. So today, we're going to take a look at what's really in fast food hamburgers. But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Food channel. After that, please leave a comment and let us know what other fast food entrees you would like to hear about. OK, time to throw a few patties of Weird History on the grill. Even though it would be a while before drive-thrus were a thing, the story of fast food really starts with the automobile. After World War I, cars became more affordable, which made them more popular. And to cater to these increasingly mobile Americans, drive-in restaurants were born. The early wave of drive-ins allowed customers to sit in their car while being waited on by servers called carhops. And the menu at the drive-ins was basically the same burgers, fries, and shakes that fast food joints are now generally associated with. But the food was cooked to order, like at a traditional diner. The first fast food restaurant, as we think of them today, opened its doors in 1921. And it's one you've probably heard of, especially if you're into the Harold and Kumar movies. That's right, it was White Castle. Founded by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson, the very first White Castle was located in Wichita, Kansas. And it sold burgers for a whopping $0.05 a piece. White Castle was a huge success. And their assembly line style of making burgers would become the model for the fast food industry, right up to the present. Even industry leader McDonald's, founded by Richard and Maurice McDonald in 1940, would utilize a similar model. But it would really be thanks to a combination of factors in the post-World War II economic boom of the 1950s that fast food would really blow up. For one, Americans had more money than ever, and suddenly realized they loved to eat out. The US also built an elaborate network of roads and highways, which encouraged Americans to travel. That meant they needed more places to stop and eat. And places with familiar branding menus, like fast food chains, had an edge with travelers in strange territory. McDonald's began to spread across the country like a plague. And dozens of other fast food places did the same in its wake. For better or worse, fast food was on its way to being an American way of life. Today, of course, no one is ever that far from a Mickey D's, or Burger King, or Wendy's. White Castle, Jack in the Box, Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Checkers, Five Guys, In-N-Out, Whataburger, or any other of 100 similar chains. Over the decades, these places have collectively served hundreds of billions of hamburgers. And as you might imagine, it has cost a lot of cows their hides. Hamburgers are, of course, made of beef. More specifically, ground beef, which is then shaped into patties of various sizes and thicknesses. So understanding fast food hamburgers means backing up a little to talk about the beef industry. Beef technically comes from a domestic bovine, like steer, bull, ox, or cow. We'll call them all cattle. And raising all that cattle to make all that beef requires a whole industrial process. That process starts with that cattle standing around in fields eating grass and watching people drive by while shouting, we got cows. After a period of pasture foraging, primarily on non-crop lands, of the cattle stock in the US, which is around 90 million heads in 2024, a certain percentage is destined for feedlots, some after conditioning further with more grass feeding, dehorning, deworming, and vaccination. Feedlots, or feed yards, are typically massive operations where up to 100,000 head of cattle are monitored for health and fed on high-energy diets of grains, such as corn, oats, barley, sorghum, and hay. This is to get them up to their target weight faster, on less land, with less labor. Some antibiotics are administered for prevention of disease, some for the cure of infections, and some antibiotics, none related to drugs used by humans, are used to increase yield by promoting certain bacterial colonies in the rumen of the cattle that allow the cattle to grow with less grain. Administration of these drugs is overseen by the FDA, the USDA, and follows the Beef Quality Assurance Program, which documents the best practices for minimal and proper use of antibiotics in the production of beef products. Once a head of cattle reaches target weight, which, on average, is 1,200 pounds, it is sent to processing facilities to be dispatched, often with a compressed air stunner that drives a steel bolt through their skull. It's that weapon Javier Bardem's character uses in the 2007 movie No Country for Old Men. The cattle is then slaughtered. And in the case of ground beef, the meat is fed into giant grinders, which can grind over 800,000 pounds of meat a day. In other words, the ground beef in your hamburger isn't from one cow, but maybe from thousands of cows. If what you are eating is marketed as ground beef, that's the end of the process. To be labeled as ground beef, the beef product cannot contain any additives, phosphates, binders, extenders, water, or organ meat. It's just ground beef. But if it's called something like beef patties or hamburger patties, a whole bunch of things might be in there, such as the mysterious additives, which may include things like potassium sorbate, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, corn fiber, corn starch, sugar, and various flavorings and seasonings. Speaking of which, some places, like A&W, for example, have been known to include appetite-increasing MSG derivatives in those seasonings, along with flavor enhancers like disodium inosate, disodium guanylate, and silicon dioxide. Silicon dioxide. You may be interested to know that even the toppings on fast food burgers can have additives. For instance, the pickles on burgers from McDonald's, White Castle, and Jack in the Box contain potassium sorbate, a food preservative. They also have food dyes that may trigger allergies in some individuals. And as we all know, sauces, which often appear on fast food burgers, can hide all sorts of things. McDonald's Big Mac sauce, for example, contains our preservative pal potassium sorbate. Between the burger, toppings, and sauce, your meal may be sponsored by potassium sorbate. For most of the history of fast food, the meat you would find in most fast food hamburgers was processed meat, meaning the ground beef had been modified to improve its taste and shelf life. So what's so bad about processed meat? Well, for one thing, processed meats have been linked to cancer. In fact, the World Health Organization has, in their own words, confidently concluded that processed meat causes cancer, although they don't say how much you have to eat to be at risk. And if cancer doesn't scare you off, processed meat has also been linked to conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To make matters worse, a number of fast food places used to claim their burger patties were made from 100% beef when they were actually using processed meat. McDonald's, for example, used to make their burgers with a byproduct known as finely textured beef, which is made from ground up beef trimmings treated with ammonium hydroxide, a chemical that kills bacteria. Infamously known as the pink slime, McDonald's stopped using it in 2011, but not so much because they wanted to. Despite all the pink slime, there have always been fast food places that make their burgers with real beef. While McDonald's was riding it out with the pink slime, In-N-Out has been using real beef since 1948, Whataburger since 1950, and Wendy's finally changed Ronald McDonald's mind? Well, in the early aughts, there was an explosion in the popularity of fast casual style burger places like Shake Shack and Five Guys that all used real beef. Consumers started taking note of things like that, and the competition started to eat into Ronald's bottom line. After McDonald's finally ditched the pink slime in 2011, their burgers have been made from 100% beef ever since. They've also eliminated any preservatives, artificial flavors, and colors. Other franchises that now use 100% real beef include Burger King, Sonic, A&W, and Fatburger. But not everyone has got on board. Jack in the Box, for example, still uses processed beef, which is a Jack in the Box thing to do. Of course, making all that real beef has its own impacts. Large scale cattle farming contributes to greenhouse gas production. Cattle ranches use a lot of land, some of which involve deforestation in some parts of the world. And the soybeans used in cattle feed is a water-intensive crop causing cows to belch methane. In fact, according to some calculations, as recently as 2019, McDonald's produced over 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gas in its beef production process. In 2014, the Golden Arches vowed to reach net zero carbon by 2050. And by some accounts, it has been a leader in moving towards beef sustainability. And considering McDonald's sells around 2 and 1 half billion burgers a year, addressing the problem is going to take an industry-wide effort. But at least there's no more pink slime in our quarter founders. Believe it or not, these days, most of your favorite fast food burgers are made from 100% real beef, unless you happen to be a fan of Jack in the Box, in which case you're already immune to bad news. Today, McDonald's Big Mac is made from real beef, as is Burger King's Whopper, Wendy's Baconator, In-N-Out's Double Double, Shake Shack's Shackburger, Fatburger's Original Burger, Carl's Jr.'s Famous Star, and five guys creatively named Hamburger. So if eating processed beef is one of your concerns, feel free to get that fast food hamburger and dig right in. McDonald's announced in 2018 that it would start working to reduce the use of antibiotics in its beef. And they have lessened its use, although their beef production process still uses some, as does Wendy's, although neither as much as Burger King, Sonic, Jack in the Box, and Dairy Queen. Animal cruelty concerns are another issue fast food companies face. Factory farming typically entails keeping animals in cramped, stifling conditions. In 2012, McDonald's announced they would change some of those practices as they relate to pigs. But according to the Humane Society of the United States, they haven't changed much yet. Even billionaire investor Carl Icahn has slammed the company for its treatment of animals and has made efforts to force them to overhaul their practices. The bottom line is that while there's still a lot to improve in the fast food meat pipeline, the burgers you get at a fast food joint these days are, for the most part, 100% real. Cows. Just don't ask what's in the chicken nuggets. So what do you think? And what's your favorite fast food hamburger? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other Weird History Food videos.