Herd Mentality

I'm trying to decide what's worse: eating food treated with ammonium hydroxide or knowing that McDonald's is now serving food without the benefit of an industrial sanitizing agent as an ingredient. Yes, OK, we've managed to marshal the considerable weight of the American ground-beefing public to force corrective action by the evil corporation forcing us to eat things that aren't vegetables. But from both all the articles I've read, ammonium hydroxide is used to make "scrap meat" into something that is just this side of swallowable by humans. I have to say, I don't immediately object. And neither do you, really. Just because something is unnatural isn't any reason to immediately reject the idea of ingesting it. If we were really put off by science-fiction food, how has "blue raspberry" persisted as a flavor option?

Given both the prevalence of the franchise and the still-teetery nature of our current economy, I think if there were a significant increase in the price of a McDonald's hamburger, we'd have had some kind of infographic and a background bed of crashing timpanis to let us know on every cable news outlet. So McDonald's is no longer using those particular cheap bits of animal protein, nor are they employing a powerful antibacterial in their bun-filler preparation process. Logic and the laws of economies leave us with the conclusion that they must be using something equally inexpensive and easy to manufacture. The only candidate that leaps to mind would be piles of used sawdust shoveled away from slaughterhouse floors. Or oh! Post-operative human organs for which there is no transplant potential. Spleens, appendixes (appendices?), gall bladders, those sorts of things.

No, sorry about that last one, that was irresponsible and inappropriate. I know I like to joke about corporations making money, but to imply the secret imposition of intraspecies cannibalism to the detriment of the public health in order to save a few dollars is a step too far, even for me. Plus, you know, gross. It's probably the bloody sawdust thing instead.

As much as I'd like to be wigged out and horrified, I'm thinking a trip to McDonald's is in order. It's the only patriotic thing to do. This whole "controversy" has been ginned up by a horrible foreign interloper, you know. Someone who also happens to, oh I don't know, want to sell you cookbooks about how to make your own healthier food. Slight conflict of interest, no?

And when we're all stuck in our kitchens, braising our Tofurkeys and mashing our cauliflower, spending our free time locked in a lotus pose with our eyes closed, that's when they'll strike. Here comes Jamie Oliver with his jackbooted stormtroopers, armed with hard, unprocessed bread loaves and sausages made from some kind of sunflower seed paste, and bam! Next thing you know, we're all speaking English.

Which of course, begs the question: what does Jamie fucking Oliver have against Mexicans?

Is bacteria-laden scrap meat bathed in harsh chemical solvent unpleasant and probably eventually fatal? Maybe. But this is America. Repurposing old, useless shit into irredeemably empty, soul-starving bonbons for mass public consumption is the source of all our genius. Resist us at your peril.