What’s In A Taco Anyway?

In a maneuver clearly calculated to engender massive respect for the legal profession, an Alabama law firm has taken advantage of that state’s surprisingly liberal class action laws to sue Taco Bell for claiming that the mild, grainy substance they use to fill their tacos and burritos and chalupas and enchiritos and other made-up not-really-Mexican food is only 36% beef.

What, you might reasonably ask, is the remaining 64% of whatever was stuffed in the tortillas of your fourthmeal? The answer, allegedly, is a tasty and savory blend of water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate. Pick one of those and go do your own obligatory Homer-Simpson-drooling joke. Taco Bell has denied any wrongdoing and says it will vigorously defend itself — but the unfortunately common gastrointestinal aftereffects of actually eating at Taco Bell suggest that there may be some substance to the allegations that your “Mexican Pizza” is, well, just a bunch of fried fatty glop laced to the point of chemical supersaturation with monosodium glutamate. But you should have known that already.

So if you want good taco flavor, you’ll just have to go out and buy Doritos. Seriously, go buy taco flavored Doritos. Taco was the best flavor Doritos ever made and for some reason the marketing geniuses there think it won’t sell. But since it’s out in “limited release” right now you can help me prove those marketing weenies wrong. When the bags of taco flavor Doritos start flying off the shelves, they’ll change their minds. And my efforts to lose weight will be for naught, but I’ll have my tasty taco Doritos as consolation.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

5 Comments

  1. The movie "Sweet Remedy" shows how MSG is used in lab mice to induce diabetes for scientific experiments. MSG is a huge culprit in making people fat in America and it has many forms which are deliberately obscure so the public is ignorant of what they are eating.The filmmakers have a blog at http://www.sweetremedyfilm.blogspot.com for anyone interested in reading more about toxins in our food supply.

  2. I debated blocking the comment above because it contains a link to something that looks like advertising. But there's also raw information and commentary there (with which I do not necessarily agree or endorse) so I opted to err, if at all, on the side of more speech rather than less.

  3. So does this mean that Taco Bell is going to have to start referring to its filling as beef flavored product?

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