UPDATE: Arby’s Responds To Roast Beef Confetti Query
Reader Mark writes,
So this was a new one for me. I went through an Arby’s Drive-Thru for lunch today and ordered a large roast beef sandwich. When I got back to the office and opened it up, I was a little weirded out by what I saw. It looks like the bits and chunks that fall off the roat beef as it gets sliced up.
Not very appetizing.
Our photographic comparison, inside…
Our limited Arby’s experience tells us that the roast beef should resemble the beef in the sandwiches below which we found in our Flickr pool. Obviously, they are not professional images for an advertisement.
We would be inclined to agree with you, Mark, it does look like the debris from the meat slicer. We’re not so hot on eating debris either. What gives, Arby’s? And please don’t blame it on high gasoline prices.
(Photo: mortonfox)
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@forgottenpassword: I heard that KFC can’t use the word chicken anymore because the genetically modified animals they use aren’t technically chickens!
(that’s along the same lines as the total bullshit “meat from a tube” stories people have been posting here)
@VikingP77: That’s nothing… I heard that KFC had to change their name because it’s not real chicken anymore, it comes from a mutant thing with 4 breasts and 6 legs. It’s true! My friend who used to work there said so! :p
@VikingP77: Do you care about what happens at PETA animal shelters?
@HeartBurnKid: Sorry I don’t think thats funny
Mmmmmm beef sponge!!!!
none of them look appetizing!
@HeartBurnKid: woah, spooky. jinx!
@forgottenpassword: How do you know this? Have you been to their website? This is how they describe it. “trimmed boneless beef chunks and chopped beef mixed in a self-basting solution of 9% water, salt, and sodium phosphate.”
@Concerned_Citizen: So shall we wrap this sandwich up and send it to you? Would you eat that?
The OP paid for something he did not get.
I remember a while back hearing a caller that worked at an Arby’s in Chicago on the Mancow show saying that one time an employee dropped a hunk of the beef on floor, and since you can’t be serving that shit, the employee thre it in the dumpster out back. The manager caught wind of this and made the employee dive in the dumpster to get the beef, AND SERVE IT TO CUSTOMERS.
I’m not sure what all this means because I friggin love Arby’s.
@JennQPublic: The market fresh sandwiches are way worse for you than the roast beef sandwiches.
Yum, think I will get me some Arby’s on the way home.
@AtomicPlayboy: Dirty
@forgottenpassword:
Uh, why not pry your happy ass away from American Idle and sidle on down to an Arby’s and you will see that they are telling the truth. Arby’s gets these “roasts” of pressed together beef and slices them thin so you wont notice that they are essentially scrapings. They are so heavily processed that they appear to be real meat. Geez,go to a real deli and order real roast beef and you will see the difference.
never seen a “roat beef” before…could resemble this….
I used to work for the company that supplied Arby’s with their roast beef. Unfortunately I only toured the plant that produced it and I don’t remember the entire process, but basically various beef parts combined in a process called “emulsify” (think taking a handful of hamburger and squeezing until it sticks together, but with a little more liquidity) and then “blown” into a plastic bag and frozen. I thought the product was pre-cooked, but I may be wrong. I am trying to remember back 10 years.
Looks fine to me. As a St. Louisan I prefer Lion’s Choice anyway though. It’s a challenge to keep the bun together and level to the ground so all the beef clumps don’t fall out.
@Dead Wrestlers Society:
Arby’s meat is not “mystery meat”. It is roast beef sliced off a roast. I like their food, especially the curly fries, but wish they would change their pornographic logo.
It looks a bit like chopped pot roast. Yum! Sorry if I’m not able to get outraged, but it looks more real than anything else you’d get at a fast food place.
I missed the earlier posts. I stand corrected…but it’s still beef.
“Trimmed boneless beef chunks (minimum 70%) combined with chopped beef for a maximum of 12% fat. Contains up to 9.0% of a self-basting solution of water, salt, sodium phosphate”
Beef Confetti. It’s like a birthday party in Texas!
What, was he expecting filet mignon?
@forgottenpassword:
First of all, you’re a dumbass because Arby’s own website clearly states the ingredients as being beef trimmings and chunks mixed with a 9% liquid solution and made into a chopped up paste.
As far as the peta killing animals thing: right…because the “Center for Consumer Freedom” isn’t biased as hell…this is the group that is against Mothers Against Drunk Driving because they believe that driving drunk is a “choice” and no “straightedgers” should be taking the freedom of choice away from consumers
Kraft Foods and PepsiCo have public ally trashed these guys for how unethically the premise of their astroturfing is!
Their own press releases end in this:
Director of Research
The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers, working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.
A visit to:
[www.sourcewatch.org]
Shows us this:
Advisory Panel includes:
Outback Steakhouse
Perkins
Philip Morris
Processed Meat Products
Funding from:
Cargil
Monsanto
Tyson Foods
Wendy’s
Outback
Pilgrim’s Pride
White Castle
Perdue Farms
Hatfield Quality Meats
Applebee’s
P.F. Changs
Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers
Ruby Tuesday’s
There are many more, I just abbreviated the list to fit here.
Even a trip here:
[en.wikipedia.org]
shows their many conflicts of interest
Also check this out
[www.consumerdeception.com]
@branchero: same here. I used to love that 5 for $5 deal, but they discontinued it suddenly. I went in there and they wanted to charge me around $12!
Naturally it was in the drive through and I had to sit there for 5 minutes until the cars in front of me cleared out, all the while the cashier was glaring at me like I should know they had eliminated one of their best deals.
Then, a while later, that store shut down entirely. lol.
I do really like their roast beef sandwiches though, even if it’s something I get a lot less frequently.
@Snarkysnake: so what’s so bad about heavily processed meat? Never had a hotdog or bologna?
Oh, and to address the actual “issue” that the CCF brought up…
If you were to actually research your talking points, you would discover that they don’t have an animal shelter and do not do animal adoptions.
The high kill rate is due to accepting old, sick and injured animals from people who can’t afford to have them euthanized at a vet’s office and from animal shelters in North Carolina that use inhumane means to euthanize their animals.
The CCF’s motives are to try to destroy the credibility of their opponents in any underhanded way possible.
The bottom line is that animal organizations, such as Peta, do care about animals. In fact, many (if not all) of Peta’s employees are vegan.
I’m a vegetarian, but I’m not against people eating meat; I just prefer that the animals are treated humanely on the way to the dinner plate. (I am, however, outraged at companies that try to play “humane” when in reality, they’re just as bad…an example is all the egg companies selling eggs from chickens who “are free-range and have access to the outdoors” which translates into a small hole cut into the side of the barn…) While I disagree with some of PETA’s methods, they are doing an unselfish deed by worrying about animals…much more than can be said about CCF, who is motivated by the fact that it’s funded by the inhumane companies in question.
@Alex Chasick: No kidding! As soon as I read the phrase “debris from the meat slicer”, I got hungry for Mother’s.
[southerncuisine.suite101.com]
@brainwav: To give them the benefit of the doubt, Its possible they just tried to slice too thin.
What benefit of the doubt? If they have sliced too thin, they should really slice it again. You cannot give this to a customer. Branding is important! And if you ever tried slicing roast beef, you will know that too thin does not appear like confetti. Unless the roast beef came in strips instead of chunks.
I bet they ran out of beef to slice, so they picked up whatever was left behind… Ew!
without comment:
It all looks disgusting!! Blech!!
When I was a kid we were on a a family road trip and stopped to eat at an Arby’s in Kentucky (insert joke here). I ordered a turkey sandwich and was surprised to find GRASS under the bun!! Not the kind you smoke, but the kind you mow. We couldn’t figure out how it got there (and neither could the manager) as the restaurant was located in the parking lot of a shopping center which had no grass in sight. It’s just one of those weird food mysteries best left unsolved …
Wow, that brought me incredibly close to throwing up.
And I work in a hospital.
I love Arbies, and that top pictures definately isn’t what their sandwhiches usually look like. I agree, they used the end piece of a slab of meat and chopped it up to bits.
Man that looks nasty. That would be enough to make me think twice about going back. Back in the day when I used to eat fast food, Arby’s was my absolute favorite. Those curly fries were awesome.
I like ROAT beef… Just not the nasty leftovers…
Give me a call when Arby’s actually starts selling food.
The problem is that is not real roast beef, just processed meat wiz.
We have a chain of Fast Food places called Lion’s Choice that uses real roast beef. They cook it on site and shave it fresh and serve it MEDIUM RARE!!! You can’t do that with processed meat like you get from Arby’s.
Thanks for making me hungry.. wait I just looked at your arby’s picture again, never mind.
What she got was the end, the nub the last little bit of roast beef. That’s what they usually use to make the Arby-Q. Or at least it was when I worked there 20 years ago.
@sicknick: and as soon as we get the Model UN Club off the island we’ll take you and your sister to Arbys
I will personally never eat at Arby’s again. The Cuyahoga Falls Ohio Arby’s on State road had beetles on our chicken nuggets. Luckily, my kid noticed before he ate any.
I proudly work at an Arby’s and i would have to firs appologize for that sandwich but i do agree with brain wave it dose look like they tried to slice it to thin or or sometimes it looks like that when it is the start of the new roast however i would like to know if any of those who have said how disgusting Arby’s is eat at McDonald’s or any of those other volatile fast food places i could eat Arby’s multiple times a day which i do and never get sick of it those other places one bite usually makes me sick some less than others and for all of you who probably think im just a fat lazy person who only work at Arbys because those other places thought i ate to much food sry to disappoint but i only weigh 140 Think Arby’s