So Taco Bell is apparently giving away free tacos for the next seven days. This is fine and good, but of course some people are complaining about it because Taco Bell meat is, basically, about half made of oatmeal.
To which my response is a hearty “so what?” Hey, do you remember those Taco Bell commercials from a couple years ago, where they were promising to fill you up with a massive amount of food for $1.99? Yeah, you remember those, and in fairness Taco Bell did indeed deliver a relatively massive amount of food for said amount of money. Did you really think that it was going to be all-natural premium ingredients? Here’s a quick fun experiment you can do: go to the supermarket and look to see how much a pound of beef costs. Do you think that pound of beef was really going to turn into a profit source for Taco Bell selling tacos from it at dirt-cheap prices? No. No it wasn’t. So what people are complaining about here is that Taco Bell was not able to make meat appear by magic and then sell it.
Of course, what’s even sillier are people proclaiming they will never eat Taco Bell again because the meat has been “adulterated.” These people are acting like oats in the meat somehow poisons it. It is frigging oatmeal. It is basically the healthiest thing in the world. At worst, what Taco Bell has been doing is making vaguely Mexican-flavoured meatloaf, grinding it up, and putting it in their tacos. At best, they’ve been actively improving the flavour and health value of what is, let’s be honest, industrial-grade beef, and making it cheaper for you to eat it at the same time.
This is not me endorsing Taco Bell as a restaurant, because I don’t like Taco Bell much at all. (I do like their fries.) But if you like Taco Bell, I don’t see why you wouldn’t go get yourself a free taco this week, because you apparently liked that until somebody told you you weren’t being a super-awesome carnivore as much as you thought you were.
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being from the latin part of the world, cant say im very much into fast food franchises. anyway, for me is not so much the quality of the things they sell, but the way they get it (i have worked at one slaughterhouse) and theirs work politics (i have also worked at a burger king).
maybe im biased by the megabig ones (mcdonalds, bk, kfc)… is taco bell any different? are there really notorious differences between these franchises?
i thought only USAmericans were into this! (sims & wilson of War Rocket Ajax fame can spend hours talking about fries, i mean, come on!)
Fries are some of the greatest things mankind has ever invented. If you made me choose between “the wheel” and “fries,” I would have to think long and hard about it.
Taco Bell has fries? Is this a Canada thing?
I have no idea. Don’t American Taco Bells have fries?
They’re pretty much the only think I like to get at Taco Bell. Or, as is more common, the combination KFC/Taco Bell. (Another way in which Canada differs from Americans.)
We have combination KFC/Taco Bells in America. There’s one right off my campus.
As a US expat in Canada, I can confirm that Canadian Taco Bells serve fries.
This is not how Taco Bells operate in the USA, where they focus exclusively on faux-Mexican food.
Tasty, tasty faux-Mexican food.
Unless we are talking about DEL TACO, to my knowledge Taco Bell has no fries…
I don’t often go to Taco Bell. I might if I’m in a hurry. But otherwise … this is Dallas. Good Mexican food, and cheap, not especially hard to find around here.
But hey, free taco. I probably won’t turn that down.
This sounds suspiciously alike the recent Mass Effect 2 giveaway for Dragon Age 2 purchasers, where at least one third of the comments on the BioWare boards ( and elsewhere ) seemed to be in the vein “OMG, how could you BioWare, Dragon Age 2 suckzlolololol, I hatez you forever!”.
People these days…
The funny thing is that there’s been a long standing cold war between the bits of the bioscience industry owned by meat-product manufacturers and the geneticists who work for regulatory agencies and try to at least keep an eye on the weird new ways in which meat manufacturers artificially add weight to their meat chunks by using trace amounts of proteins from other animals to bind water into the meat (which increases the weight and size of a given bit of meat, which is of obvious economic benefit when you sell meat by the lb) .
Most of the currents tricks which do this can allow the rather weird situation where it’s been entirely possible for the past twenty years to make a chicken breast that contains a small amount of chicken, trace amounts of pork/beef and more than 50% water.
Up until whichever Buffy fan at Taco Bell came up with the DoubleMeat Palace Solution to the problem of course; presumably the cost of adding oats is now cheaper than running the billion $$$ labs and processing plants to get around the tests used on the meat based water-binding techniques.
So the complaint isn’t even “oh no, the taco meat is made of oats!” it’s actually “Oh No, the taco meat is made of food!”
I’ve been assuming (perhaps optimistically) that at least some of the outrage is over representation and advertising, rather than actual content. That it’s more about the consumer’s right to expect to be told what they are actually buying. This is why certain brands of things like spreadable cheese must, by law in the U.S., label them “cold pack cheese food” or whatever, because they can’t just call it “cheese” if it isn’t 100% cheese.
But you can see the dilemma for Taco Bell, in that “have one of our new meat-food tacos!” just sounds bad. I don’t know why this doesn’t seem to greatly hurt the sales of cheesy-ish products that aren’t entirely cheese but are nonetheless beloved (here I am thinking of things like Velveeta and Spray Cheese and so on.) But, Americans have a much more mythologized relationship with their meat consumption than they do with their cheese consumption.
I fundamentally agree with you that hearing that what Taco Bell adulterated its meat with was oatmeal actually reassures me rather than turns me off. (I’d feel the same if the news was that they were creating filler out of chickpeas or soybeans.*) And you’d think they could turn that around and make a feature out of it — just tell people that the “filler” is another completely natural ingredient that is in fact healthy. I also think your “meatloaf” analogy is brilliant, because it’s a term I can think of that would actually reassure the people who would otherwise recoil from the idea of eating an adulterated meat product. “What? You like meatballs, don’t you? Well then.”
(* This actually makes me wonder if they chose oatmeal because it was cheap, or if they chose it based on it having the lowest incidence of allergies in the marketplace. The problem with using soybeans as your filler is that there are people allergic to soy; same with wheat/gluten; same with corn products. But that points out another problem of not making sure consumers are aware that their “meat” is actually “meat plus other stuff” — some people are trying to find out what a product contains because of allergies, and trying to hide it is endangering them.)
Go to Mexico and buy off a street vendor.
They’ve got a boiler, where they throw in the nasty old joints that are too tough to eat otherwise (hip, shoulder etc.) and stew it all day. When you order a taco, they rip a chunk of meat off and throw it on the fryer, add the veggies and spices, and through that on a tortilla. Awesome. (Make sure your veggies are well cooked or Montezuma will come after you)
“the rather weird situation where it’s been entirely possible for the past twenty years to make a chicken breast that contains a small amount of chicken, trace amounts of pork/beef and more than 50% water.”
This. As a callow youth, I was very partial to the McChicken, and I bought one the other day for nostalgia’s sake. It TASTED WATERY. I thought that was just me being crazy, but I guess not. Oh well, you can’t go back.
Of course, claiming that Taco Bell meat was made primarily of oatmeal was and is still merely a claim made in a case, not supported or proven or anything. Taco Bell is claiming otherwise, offering actual numbers – 88% beef and 12% seasoning.
The only thing I get from TB is the crunchwrap. And the US ones don’t serve fries (unfortunately, because fries are awesome).
Anybody else remember KenTacoHuts (KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut)?
Yeah, US Taco Bells not only do not have fries, but really lack for equivalents too. Their sides kinda suck–the only side worth getting is the cinnamon flavored crisps.
Why do you need a side with tacos? Just get more tacos.
I’ll have a taco with a side of taco. And can I have some taco with that? Thanks.
My only beef with TB is their use of Pepsi products for soda – I prefer Coke. 🙂
…I think people are missing the most important part of this.
Free. Tacos.
As a Taco Bell employee, thought I’d chime in; I work for a franchised chain in Texas (in a standalone location, not a combo store with A&W or KFC or some such). We don’t have fries, per se, but we have “Cheesy Potatoes”: lightly battered fried potato cubes, served with nacho cheese and sour cream. Packed with cholesterol, I’m sure, but damn tasty, especially with bacon when/where available.
As far as ranking up there with the other Big Food chains, a lot comes down to the management of the store in question. My store manager is extremely flexible with my college sched, beyond all expectations.
The beef thing… meh. I always get the chicken.
@Magnus: Still not understanding the DA2 hate. I dig that it has flaws, but still, it seems to feel a lot smoother than the first to me.
As far as Taco Bell fries, I remember they had “nacho fries” some years ago, basically their nacho supreme, but with fries instead of chips. Was VERY tasty. Sad they discontinued it. 🙁
@John – Taco Bell doesn’t sell Pepsi, PepsiCo sells tacos under the Taco Bell name.
Panthyr, PepsiCo doesn’t own Taco Bell anymore. The company spun off a separate corporation, Yum! Brands, which owns several fast food chains. I believe, at the very least, the company owns Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver’s, and Pizza Hut. There might be others.
However, as part of the separation of the companies, Yum! Brands approved an agreement that their restaurants would serve Pepsi products.
Also A&W.
I fucking love Taco Bell. I’m a vegetarian and you know what you’re getting when you order there. Far more freaky to me is McDonald’s and their weird reconstituted beeftato fries. Somewhere there’s a cowtato rancher rolling in his McDonald’s dollars.
Remember when Phantom Menace came out, and Col. Sanders & the Taco Bell chihuahua had to team up against the Empire with… Generic Pizza Hut Girl? Cause they had no mascot? Good times.
So is this an actual promotion this week? cuz as far as i can tell that’s a link to something that ended a while back…
It’s just like parents trying to trick their kids into eating healthier by sneaking vegetables in the meatloaf. Taco Bell is considered about us getting colon cancer when we eat delicious Crunch Wrap Supremes or Chalupas, so they’re forcing us to eat fiber. It’s sweet, really.
“It is frigging oatmeal.”
And cumin. Lots and lots of cumin.