When you hear what all McDonald’s is doing with its burgers, you almost could change this headline to “McDonald’s Goes REAL” because, from the burgers to the sauces and even their buns, all seven of McDonald’s burgers are soon going to be minus artificial preservatives, flavors and colorings.
Following in the footsteps of replacing its frozen beef with fresh beef, the company hopes that getting rid of things like calcium proponiate, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate and calcium disodium EDTA will help them cash in on more health-conscious customers’ preferences, CNN Money reports. The only thing that isn’t changing is the pickle, which will keep its preservative.
While the featured news article didn’t mention it, I should add that last year McDonald’s announced it also was going to do a study program of regenerative agriculture for the cattle used for its beef. Although a study isn’t exactly a movement, it’s a move in the right direction, as regenerative agriculture is the only thing that will help restore the Earth’s ecology and rebuild communities into healthy places to live.
Using regenerative land management that incorporates livestock, you can increase organic matter in the soil back to healthy levels in a couple of decades. This works in a synergistic way when you allow all animals to range free, roam and graze the way they were meant to. Then, by urinating and defecating on the land, livestock and poultry provide important nourishment for soil microbes, which in turn help rebuild soil quality and allow the land to flourish again.
Another thing about the news that McDonald’s wants to “go real” with its burgers is that it flies in the face of lab manufacturers like Impossible Foods, that want to sell you fake “meat,” complete with fake “blood,” created in a lab. I put those two words in quotations because I want to emphasize the point that you can’t really call something meat or blood if it doesn’t have any meat or blood in it, can you?
The truth is this so-called meat substitute is actually plant-based and contains a mix of wheat, coconut oil, potatoes and something they call “heme,” which is derived from engineered yeast. If you think that sounds gross and swear you’ll never eat it, think again: You may unwittingly eat this stuff if the fake meat industry gets its way, and is allowed to keep the word “meat” on its label, despite the fact that it isn’t meat at all.
Of course, they’re planning on your lack of knowledge about what their product is, and obviously purposely wants to mislead you with the word “meat” on its label, so my word to you today is to beware and read labels. And maybe, even though I don’t support fast foods at all, McDonald’s might even take up the flag and lead the way on this, even if it’s just to protect the real meat in their own product.