All fast food chains have their naysayers, but Taco Bell seems like it's more frequently
a target than others.
Many of the rumors are just that, but there are some that are actually quite true.
Will you still love Taco Bell after we spill the refried beans about what they'd rather
you didn't know?
That sauce is definitely a crucial ingredient to anything on Taco Bell's menu, so here's
a question: how many packets do you use?
One or two on a taco?
Three or four on a burrito?
More?
And here's the problem.
While there's no fat in that little packet, there is a lot of sodium.
One mild sauce packet has 35 mg of sodium.
If you use two on a taco and have three tacos for lunch, that's six packets and 210 mg of
sodium.
Considering that the American Heart Association recommends trying to keep your sodium intake
under or around 1500 mg a day, that's a big deal.
A lot of Taco Bell's menu items are also hiding a ton of sodium.
The Grande Scrambler Burritos, the XXL Grilled Stuft Burritos, and the Breakfast Crunch Wraps
have your entire day's worth of sodium wrapped up in them, and while that's shocking, what's
more shocking is that's still the case after Taco Bell went on a very, very quiet campaign
to lower the sodium in their menu.
According to USA Today, Taco Bell had already lowered the sodium content of its ingredients
by 15 percent between 2009 and 2015.
That's great, but it's still pretty bad.
Look at it this way.
Eat three soft tacos, and you're getting 1500 mg of sodium right there, without sauce.
There is, however, good news on the horizon.
By 2020, parent company Yum!
Brands wants 20 percent of their chains' menu items under the guidelines for mealtime limits.
In 2015, Taco Bell made headlines when they became the latest chain to promise to get
rid of artificial ingredients like food dyes.
The biggest changes came with the nacho cheese and red tortilla chips, and sure, it's a big
deal.
But take a look at their ingredients even years after their announcement, and you'll
see many of their drinks still come with things like red No. 40, and blue No. 1.
The fine print of their announcement notes it applies to most of their items, not all.
Their drinks will continue to contain artificial colors, and so will any of their co-branded
items.
The announcement covers about 95 percent of their menu, and they're probably hoping you'll
overlook the fact that they weren't committed enough to go the whole way.
Animal welfare and responsibly sourced and raised meats is a huge deal to a lot of people,
but in 2015, The Washington Post outed Taco Bell for their lack of commitment on all fronts.
They said that in 2014, then-CEO Greg Creed said it would be nice for Taco Bell to go
hormone- and antibiotic-free, but that it just wasn't possible.
Why?
Humane farming methods are more expensive, reporters noted, and that might also have
something to do with why Taco Bell has been slow to get on the bandwagon that every decent
person should seriously already be on.
According to Darren Tristano, a market research expert at Technomic, money is at the heart
of Taco Bell's less-than-responsible ingredient sourcing.
He says,
"Taco Bell is at such a low price point, even for fast food, that [it's] really hard to
switch to any sourcing that will affect price."
Is that acceptable?
In 2016, Taco Bell issued an official statement saying they were going to stop using chicken
raised with antibiotics.
Chicken is a major ingredient, and they promised the switch was going to happen by 2017.
Cynics might say it was about time, especially since they quoted the World Health Organization's
warning about how important it was to get antibiotics out of food.
The report they referenced was from 2013.
Every year, the country's fast food chains are given a report card score based on their
ingredient sourcing and use of antibiotics.
According to CNN, Taco Bell got a B- for their work toward antibiotic-free chicken, and that's
a huge improvement from the F they got only a few years prior.
But that also brings up a super-important question: What about all that beef?
Taco Bell didn't answer CNN's request for more information on their ingredient sourcing,
and that's worrisome.
There are some things that should be completely transparent, and sourcing is one of them.
Sure, a CEO is a businessperson, not a chef or a nutritionist, and you can't expect them
to know their way around a kitchen.
But they should have a pretty thorough knowledge of their products, and what happened with
former CEO Greg Creed is probably the scariest thing about that Taco Bell seasoned beef lawsuit
that made headlines in 2011.
The lawsuit basically claimed that Taco Bell's signature beef was less-than-decent, and they
responded by coming clean about all the ingredients.
It's essentially all beef save 12 percent of seasonings and other products, and even
though their CEO publically touted how great it was, he never bothered to research just
what those ingredients did.
He was on Good Morning America when he was asked about something called an "isolated
oat product," and he had to admit that he didn't know what it was or why it was there.
He said,
"I'm not a food scientist.
But what I can tell you is that every ingredient is in there for a purpose."
That's… great, but not super encouraging.