By Jonathan Stankiewicz
I am at least 98% sure that I have never consumed one. The 2% is in case I slipped up somewhere. Every year the McRib comes back, and every year it seems to disappear. I’ve never bothered to take notice, until now.
You should know that I work at Little Mark’s Big Barbecue, in Vernon, and we smoke our own ribs, make our own coleslaw and have our own secret sauces. Little Mark’s may not be the best restaurant in Connecticut, but I know what real pork is. The McRib is not real pork.
Some would say that it’s delicious and are excited when they see it come back from it’s mysterious hibernations every year. I say it’s 26 g of fat, 980 mg of sodium and 10 g of saturated fat of nothing. People, the bun alone has 34 ingredients (from the company’s website).
The kicker is azodicarbonamide. I can’t pronounce it either, so don’t worry. It is “a bleaching and maturing additive for flour,” says Ruth Winter in her book A Consumer’s Dictionary on Food Additives, in its seventh edition. “Used in amounts up to 45 ppm. The FDA wants further study of this chemical for both short-term and long-term effects. Although allowed as a food additive, this is no current reported use of the chemical, and, therefore, although toxicology information may be available, it is not being updated. This is a potentially serious problem.”
It’s a big, serious problem.
It should also be said that azodicarbonamide “most commonly used in the manufacture of foamed plastics like in gym mats and the soles of shoes,” says Meredith Melnick in a Healthland post on Time.com. It’s sad that reading that didn’t even surprise me.
At first I thought this was just for the McRib. I went through some of my favorite burgers: the Double Cheeseburger, Big Mac and the Premium Crispy Chicken Ranch BLT Sandwich all have azodicarbonamide in their buns. Burger King has it in all of their buns except the ciabatta buns. Wendy’s has it in some of their burger buns as well. For God’s sake, Subway has it in their sourdough and Italian (white) breads. All that was found online on the companies’ own websites in their nutrition information. They aren’t hiding anything from us. We just haven’t paid any attention.
Can we just make bread? I grew up on Home Pride Butter Top Wheat Bread, which has no azodicarbonamide.
Realistically, will this make me stop eating fast food? Probably not. Will this stop you? I don’t know. As we are trying to find more and more ways to eat healthier in today’s foods, maybe we need to start demanding better quality foods.
Now, I’m not saying we should ‘occupy’ any of the fast food chains, but where do we draw the line here? This isn’t just a fast food problem, it’s a food problem in general.
Why are we worrying about the latest iPhone when we could be focusing on why we are letting people eat an ingredient that we use to workout on?
The McRib is back. Will you indulge?