Yo quiero lots of weird and unpronouncable ingredients

by Tom Philpott.

All this talk about Taco Bell’s beef-spiked stew of fillers and flavor “enhancers” got me to wondering: what other weird stuff lurks in the fast food giant’s delicacies? Luckily, Taco Bell provides a convenient online ingredients list for its products. Let’s peruse it, shall we?

Let’s start with a rather straight-forward dish: steak. On the rare occasions I cook steak, here’s what I do.
Ingredients are pretty basic: steak, sea salt, pepper, a high-quality
cooking fat, and a few simple substances (wine, garlic, shallots) for
sauce. Here’s Taco Bell’s version:

Beef,

Water, Seasoning [Modified Potato Starch, Salt, Autolyzed Yeast

Extract, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, Carrageenan, Paprika, Garlic Powder,

Onion Powder, Spices, Hot Sauce (Aged Red Peppers, Vinegar, Salt),

Citric Acid, Sugar, Dehydrated Vinegar, Soybean Oil, Natural Flavors,

Soybean Lecithin], Sodium Phosphates. Sauce: Water, Seasoning (Salt,

Caramel Color, Modified Food Starch, Autolyzed Yeast Extract,

Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Garlic Powder, Xanthan Gum, Onion Powder, Beef

Stock, Vinegar Solids, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Sugar, Thiamine

Hydrochloride, Succinic Acid, Soy Lecithin, Beef Fat, Potassium Sorbate)

Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, BHT. CONTAINS SOYBEANS

Wow
—not just dehydrated vinegar, but also vinegar solids. Both concepts
blow my mind. You can turn vinegar into a solid substance? You can
dehydrate it? And the two things are different? Who’s Taco Bell’s head
chef, Ferran Adria?

Then there’s the presence of dextrose, a form of sugar. By itself, dextrose
evidently doesn’t do the trick for Taco Bell’s food engineers, so they
have to add maltodextrin. What is malodextrin, you ask? Here’s Wikipedia:

Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide that is used as a food additive. It is produced from starch by partial hydrolysis and is usually found as a creamy-white hygroscopic spraydried powder. Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless. It is commonly used for the production of natural sodas and candy.

Sodas,
candy, and ... steak?

Then there’s that lashing of heart-ruining partially hydrogenated soybean oil in the steak sauce. Nice job, guys!
Clearly, my pedestrian steak-cooking style needs a kick in the pants
from those Taco Bell kitchen wizards.

Now let’s move to “southwestern chicken”: now, with mixed triglycerides!

Chicken
Breast Meat With Rib Meat, Water, Seasoning [Salt, Maltodextrin,
Spices, Garlic Powder, Chili Pepper, Paprika, Onion Powder, Carrageenan,
Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Natural Flavoring, Mixed
Triglycerides, Yeast, Modified Corn Starch, Corn Syrup Solids, Yeast
Extract, Alginates (Sodium, Calcium And/Or Ammonium), Cellulose, Calcium
Chloride, Sodium Benzoate Used To Protect Quality, Not More Than 2%
Silicon Dioxide Added To Prevent Caking, Soybean Oil], Modified Food
Starch, Sodium Phosphates Soy Lecithin (Used As A Processing Aid).
CONTAINS SOYBEANS

Again,
we get something usually thought of as liquid—this time, corn syrup— in solid form. And again, we find echoes of one ingredient in another:
not just disodium inosinate, but also disodium guanylate—both of
which seem to be normally used with some form of monosodium glutamate (MSG). I
think my favorite ingredient of all is this: “Sodium Benzoate Used To
Protect Quality, Not More Than 2% Silicon Dioxide Added To Prevent
Caking.” Because, you know, I think we can all agree it sucks when southwestern
chicken starts caking. Forget that research suggests that sodium
benzoate may cause “serious cell damage.”

I
could go on for a while like this. In a pork dish, we find “Roast Pork
Flavor,” which consists of “Water, Flavor, Salt, Autolyzed Yeast
Extract, Sunflower Oil, Propylene Glycol, Natural Smoke Flavor, Xanthan
Gum.” (I salute the use of “flavor” as an ingredient.) That same dish
contains “Pork Conditioner” (Modified Food Starch), and “Grilled Flavor”
(Maltodextrin, Salt, Grill Flavor [from Vegetable Oil].”

But
perhaps the biggest engineering triumph of all lies in the dessert
menu. Taco Bell does feel the need to include actual pork amid
the “Roast Pork Flavor.” Even its inamous “seasoned beef” contains 34 percent beef. Truth-in-advertising attorneys take note: Taco has successfully engineered the strawberries
out of the “Strawberry Frutista.” I’m not sure what a frutista is; the
word doesn’t exist outside the confines Taco Bell-world. But I know what
a strawberry is, and I don’t see even one on this ingredient list.

Treated
Water, Sugar, Citric Acid, Natural Flavor, Yucca Extract, Salt, Red Dye
#40, Sodium Benzoate (Preserves Freshness), Potassium Sorbate
(Preserves Freshness)

The engineers failed miserably, though, with tomatoes. Ingredients:

Tomatoes

Perhaps since agreeing to pay an extra penny a pound for tomatoes from Florida after a boycott from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Taco Bell execs found some grudging respect for the ingredient and waved its engineers back. Would that other common foodstuffs got similar treatment from the fast food industry.

Related Links:

Flava Flav opens fried chicken chain, threatens the Colonel

Is Taco Bell’s beef ‘filler’ the healthiest thing it sells?

Taco Bell ‘beef’: mostly not beef [UPDATED]