Opinion: Taco Bell Suit Exposes Ignorance About Meat

Shortly after the news about the Taco Bell lawsuit came out, I and my students started to monitor the media coverage about the "beef over beef." What we found was that, while the lawsuit offers American consumers a valuable lesson about what we eat, when it comes to reporting about what the meat really is made of, most journalists aren't exactly being accurate.

The lawsuit, for those who haven't been following the case, alleges that Taco Bell was falsely claiming the meat filling used in its tacos and burritos to be beef, since only a small percentage was actually meat.

First, it's worth noting that healthy consumers harbor no illusions about anything that you can buy in a drive-thru actually being good for you. It is what it is. However, some news reporters are having a field day with Taco Bell, while playing fast and loose with research statistics about the hamburger meat that most national take-out chains typically serve.

Many news outlets covering the lawsuit have referenced a recent scientific research article that claimed fast-food hamburger only contains on average about 12 percent meat. I have read the article, which breaks down the other percentages: 50 percent water; about 8 percent each of connective tissue, blood vessels and peripheral nerve; 7 percent adipose tissue; 4 percent plant material; 3 percent cartilage; and 2 percent bone.

That may sound unsavory. Except, if you take a closer look at a steak, it would have roughly the same percentages. And if you broke down what's in that hamburger on your grill, you'd also get roughly the same proportions. Even more so if you make taco meat at home, adding in the same kinds of fillers and water that Taco Bell puts into its meat filling.

The suit against Taco Bell failed to take account of these perfectly natural constituents of "beef" plus the seasonings, tomato sauce and peppers. Now, Taco Bell -- or actually the company that supplies it -- does add some fillers, binders and preservatives ... and I can see how people could take exception to that. But the widespread claim that it's not 100 percent beef -- but only 12 percent -- is simply not true.

By and large, most Americans who do eat meat don't want to take a closer look at it. We have such a weird national attitude toward meat -- while we place a high value on meat and we love to eat it, we're largely incurious about what it really is and where it comes from.

The very definition of "meat" for food-labeling purposes can be extremely misleading, if it means muscle tissue, without water -- and that's how misunderstanding is becoming part of the Taco Bell beef battle.

Well, then, what is it? The beef in that suddenly controversial taco is probably something like 85 percent beef, if you subtract the junk.

I'm all for truth in advertising. So perhaps a better way to put it is that the filling starts with "100 percent beef" and adds "seasonings binders and fillers." That would be more accurate than saying it's 12 percent beef and the rest garbage, which really amounts to misleading scare tactics that do nothing to help consumers make informed choices about what they eat.

My students understood this point immediately. But the general consensus among them -- many of whom ate these very same tacos this week and will continue to do so in the future -- was that if you are eating fast food, you expect there to be some junk in it.

It's fast food, after all.

Ken Albala, a food historian at University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., is the author of numerous books on the history of food, including "The Lost Art of Real Cooking" and "Beans: A History."