Sure, you might love sushi, croissants, and whiskey — but could you eat insects, yoga
mats, and beaver butt juice?
Fair warning: What you're about to see might put you off these foods forever.
The infamous theory that hot dogs contain animal lips and anuses is probably a little
hyperbolic, but it's not too far from the truth.
Hot dogs are made using scraps and trimmings from a variety of different animals, which
may include cows, pigs, or chickens.
The cheaper the hot dog, the more likely it is to contain mechanically separated meat.
Mechanically separated meat is essentially a meat purée made by pressing the meat from
the bones that remain after butchering; this may include skin, fat, and gristle.
According to USDA requirements, a hot dog should only contain less than 20 percent mechanically
separated meat — but that's still a whole lot of meat sludge.
In order to make franks, these trimmings are combined with starches and seasonings and
emulsified into a batter, which is then cased in cellulose.
Et voila: the good ol' American hot dog.
"God bless America!"
If you can't stand knowing how the sausage is made, you're probably not going to want
to know about chicken nuggets, either.
As Jamie Oliver so often attempted to impress upon young people, chicken nuggets aren't
made with chicken meat, but rather a kind of chicken milkshake.
According to some studies, only 50 percent of a chicken nugget — and sometimes less
than that — is actually made up of muscle tissues.
The rest seems to contain a mysterious mix of nerves and fat.
This mix is seasoned with maltodextrin, a form of sugar, as well as sodium phosphates,
before the nugget is battered and deep-fried.
And that's to say nothing of the way those chickens were bred.
McDonald's, for example, is one of the worst sellers of chicken nuggets when it comes to
the inhumane treatment of animals.
The chickens are hatched in incubators, and live in filth and squalor until it's time
for slaughter.
It's not surprising that a lot of highly processed foods contain questionable ingredients.
But did you know that some nostalgic, home-cooked meals can be just as tough to stomach?
Consider Thanksgiving dinner and its most typical centerpiece: the roast turkey.
Turkey in and of itself isn't necessarily any better or worse than any other meat.
But in the United States, where white meat is prized, turkeys have been bred to be breast-heavy
in order to make it impossible for these birds to run, fly, or even mate.
The size of a turkey tom's breast is so enormous that it would actually crush the hen if the
pair attempted to copulate as nature intended.
As a result, domesticated turkeys must be bred using artificial insemination.
Concerns surrounding this cruel treatment may already turn you off turkey, and it's
not any easier to hear that some 85 to 90 percent of the turkeys we consume have been
raised on factory farms.
Maybe that nut roast doesn't look so bad after all.
Many meat eaters have made their peace with the inhumane treatment of animals raised for
consumption, but it's particularly hard to contend with the deeply unethical world of
veal production.
Veal is made from the meat of six- to eight-month-old male calves.
These calves are separated from their mothers very shortly after birth in order to preserve
the mother's milk supply, and many spend the entirety of their short lives in a tiny crate
that may be smaller than one cubic meter.
This process is meant to cause the calf's muscles to waste, making the meat even more tender.
Veal crates have been outlawed by the European Union, and some American veal companies are
phasing the practice out.
Crates have also been outlawed by some states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Kentucky,
Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Rhode Island.
But there is no federal law prohibiting the practice, and many other states continue to
raise veal in this manner.
Some strange additives and processes are obscured by the industries that use them.
However, New Hampshire's Tamworth Distilling has been wholly forthcoming in its use of
beaver butt juice.
"God help us all."
Castoreum is a substance extracted from a beaver's castor sac, which is located near
— but not in — the anal gland.
The castor sacs are used to expel a scent used to mark a beaver's territory, and in
the case of beavers, that substance has a musky vanilla aroma.
Castoreum has been used since ancient Roman times.
It was a fairly widespread stand-in for vanilla until the beaver trapping industry fell from grace.
These days, harvesting castoreum requires a process that involves hand-milking the castor
sacs of anesthetized beavers.
But this small, artisanal company leans into the oddity of this historic ingredient with
its whiskey.
According to them, castoreum imparts a leathery flavor reminiscent of raspberry and vanilla
to the finished whiskey.
Cheers!
Octopuses might not be as cute as piglets or veal calves, but consuming such an intelligent
animal may give you pause for thought.
Octopuses exhibit far greater intelligence and natural curiosity than many other animals.
Despite being fairly solitary creatures, they can also cooperate with other octopuses, and
even with other species, to hunt and track down hidden prey; they are also able to learn
by watching another octopus carry out a task.
Octopuses are notable for their ability to use what has been referred to as "conditional
discrimination," which means that they can make modifying choices depending on the context.
Research has shown that the cephalopods are even capable of planning, reasoning, and problem-solving.
Additionally, octopus farming poses many risks to the environment, as it tends to impact
negatively on marine environments: Since octopuses are carnivores, they have to be fed other
fish, which further depletes ecosystems.
The bread at Subway ended up under the microscope in 2014, when blogger Vani Hari accused the
sandwich chain of using the so-called "yoga mat chemical" Azodicarbonamide in its sandwich bases.
But while Subway phased out the chemical almost immediately after the ensuing media frenzy,
it wasn't the only company taking advantage of the chemical's bubble-forming properties
as a leavening agent.
Azodicarbonamide is a chemical additive: Its proclivity for forming bubbles in foams and
plastics does indeed give yoga mats their bouncy texture, but it also pops up in everything
from hair straighteners to pesticides.
Azodicarbonamide remains popular as a leavening agent and whitener, notably at Arby's, where
it is used in the chain's croissants.
Not only is it hard to reconcile the presence of the yoga mat chemical in the base of a
ham-and-cheddar croissant, but research has actually linked this chemical to cancer in
lab animals, particularly when heated.
Maybe best to give those croissants a pass.
"Sacre bleu!"
Offal is used in many cuisines around the world, but it's not quite as popular in the
United States.
In particular, the food known as head cheese might not seem too appealing to the American palette.
Despite the name, there isn't any cheese in head cheese — it's actually made from the
heads of pigs, calves, or sometimes sheep or cows.
This concoction is derived from the collagen-rich meat of the face.
The collagen transforms to gelatin during the cooking process, which binds the meatier
portions of the terrine in all its gelatinous glory.
Regular head cheese includes jowls, skin, snout, and sometimes feet, though other iterations
of head cheese may include tongue, blood, or bone.
Head cheese is typically consumed on crackers or on a sandwich.
There are numerous different varieties of head cheese out there, too; suelze, souse,
and tongue head cheese, among others.
If you've ever enjoyed a California roll, you've probably enjoyed the sweet flavor of
fake crab meat.
Imitation crab meat is less expensive than real crab, as it's made with a mixture of
cheap fish ground into a paste and seasoned with sugar and salt.
It may also be bulked out with starch, egg whites, and vegetable oil.
Fake crab is usually dyed with a red dye known as carmine to give it that sought-after rosy hue.
And guess what: Carmine is derived from insects.
Cochineal hail from Latin America, and their diet mostly consists of cacti.
The wingless females are used to make carmine, which may also be labeled as natural red four,
crimson lake, or E120.
These insects are dried and filtered to remove any appendages before being used; they turn
up in everything from cosmetics to candy.
Unlike some others, this additive is quite harmless, but for those unaccustomed to the
time-tested practice of insect consumption, it could still be hard to swallow.
Strawberries — and berries in general — are beloved by fans of healthy eating: rich in
antioxidants, vitamin C, and... pesticides?
Yes, according to the Environmental Working Group's latest Dirty Dozen list, which ranks
the pesticide contamination in foods based on USDA testing data, conventionally grown
strawberries are the most contaminated produce item consumed in the United States.
They rank just above other supposedly healthy items like spinach, kale, collard greens,
and cherries.
Many of the foods on the Dirty Dozen list showed contamination levels in over 90% of
tested samples.
Per the report, chemicals that have long been banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency were frequently detected.
A former senior vice president of research at EWG explains that these may be endocrine
disruptors and could even lead to life-threatening ailments like cancer.
Of course, the lesson learned from this annual list should not be to avoid strawberries entirely.
Rather, the EWG urges consumers to seek out organic produce whenever possible — especially
when it comes to items at the top of its list.
You probably know better than to swallow your chewing gum, and for good reason: Gum contains
numerous different substances that can pave the way for some digestive side effects, including
glycerol, a compound derived from wood, and sorbitol, an artificial sweetener.
"Always goes wrong when we come to the desert.
Always."
That said, the most surprising chewing gum additive is lanolin.
Lanolin is a waxy secretion produced by glands in a sheep's skin that keep its wool waterproof,
and so it's used as an ingredient in certain skincare products.
But it can also be found in some chewing gums, as it can lend this treat its sought-after
rubbery texture.
And since the use of lanolin is so standardized that it doesn't need to be listed on the gum's
packaging, you may not even know it's there.
Dry-aged beef may be the most sought-after by steak lovers, but would they be clamoring
for these pricey cuts if they knew that dry-aging pretty much just means letting beef rot?
As Katie Flannery, butcher and COO at Flannery Beef, tells the Robb Report:
"An unsexy way to explain it is that dry-aging, in a nutshell, is a controlled decay process."
Exposing the beef to oxygen allows enzymes and bacteria to break it down and tenderize it.
Compounded with the moisture loss that occurs during the process, dry aging results in a
far richer flavor.
In an interview with Serious Eats, Josh Ozersky, organizer of the annual Meatopia festival,
described this flavor as "funky."
Of course, the controlled nature of the rotting is essential to this process: The bacteria
on the surface of the beef are healthy, much like those used to age cheese, and any visible
mold is cut away before the beef is cooked and served.
Still, seeing an aging room filled with rotting meat carcasses could have even the biggest
steak fan reaching for the salad.
Chocolate may be considered a superfood and peanuts may be rich in protein, but if you're
looking for those antioxidant benefits, don't go reaching for a chocolate-covered Payday.
If you take a closer look at the label, you'll notice that Payday isn't described as chocolate
per se, but "chocolatey."
This indicates a loophole that allows producers of cheap chocolate-flavored candy to avoid
adding enough chocolate liquor to the product to actually make it true chocolate.
The resulting candy lacks the same mouthfeel as the real stuff, since it is made with vegetable
oil rather than cocoa butter.
Of course, Payday is not the only culprit of such trickery.
Good Humor uses a so-called "chocolate-flavored coating" on its original ice cream bars; even
Butterfinger, ironically, contains no cocoa butter.
If only the real thing will do, examine the ingredient list to ensure that either "chocolate
liquor," "cocoa," or "cocoa butter" appear.