Are Mcdonalds hamburgers and Filet O Fish made of “real” meat that they purport to?”
Dear Cecil: Regarding the reader who wrote claiming that McDonald’s hamburgers are made of “dead steer” and not, as you stated in an earlier column, “dead cow”: my source says you’re both right, although you, Cecil, are righter, ounce for ounce. Back in the late 70s my husband put himself through college by working at a factory that produced hamburgers solely for McDonald’s. This was done by grinding together bovine flesh from two very different sources. The lean meat came from dairy cows who had outlived their ability to profitably produce milk. Since dairy cows aren’t fed the fattening-up diet beef steers get, their flesh is exceptionally lean, and thus exceptionally flavorless. To compensate, the workers added fat from beef steers (in chunks that were referred to around the factory as “plate”) during the grinding to achieve a fattier, tastier final product. Since these burgers contain more lean meat than fat, they can be said to contain more cow than steer. (If memory serves, the fa
