Could be worse at least your getting some B3 Vitamins with Niacin.

What the heck is chicken?

Who is this Xanthan, and why is his chewing gum in my burger?

Ummm. Maybe you should have actually read the How Stuff Works article more carefully. These aren't the top 10 ingredients used. They are the list at the top of 10 different categories. They're not supposed to all be 'food'.

Your link is broken.
should be [recipes.howstuffworks.com]

Salt is essential for life and no one can live without it. It forged a lot of the world, and was the main reason for many explorations.

Also, MSG is also found naturally in many foods, but always makes me sing this when I read/hear it:

You're link is messed up.

Also, the list is the not the top 10 ingredients overall, it is the top ingredient in 10 different categories; ie top sweetener, top thickener, etc. etc....

@hi: From what I have heard, they are beakless, organless, featherless organisms created by KFC/KGC.

To say that these are the most common ingredients is a little inaccurate. The most common ingredients used, by mass, are probably not on this list (except maybe the chicken). These ingredients are things that get added in small amounts to food for one reason or another. Xanthan gum, for instance, is a thickener added in small amounts to things like ice cream.

Also, I once got into a tug of war over some food like this with my dog. Let's just say one of us got bit. It was hard to explain to the vet as she stitched poor Huck up, but hey, I paid for that McChicken Scanwich!

@ThunderSaid: Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing - just because Xanthan gum might appear in every single item, it could still only account for 0.0001% of the total mass of everything they sell. Ah, journalistic sensationalism!

@nato0519: Citric acid is beneficial, as well.

@HappyMothersDay_GitEmSteveDave: Oh heck no, don't bring logic into this discussion.

Fast food is BAD... wonderfully fatty, salty, sugary, MSG ridden.... gosh, i'm making myself hungry, errr, I mean, I'm gonna vomit.

@henwy: The source article itself calls them the "ten most common ingredients," though. It then discusses them within categories. If they meant it to be the top of ten different categories, they haven't said so.

However, it's a phraseology that's a little ambiguous--it seems to mean frequency of appearance rather than amount of inclusion.

@HappyMothersDay_GitEmSteveDave: Huck Vs. Hawkeye in an all out showdown....

You can ref this time.

@floraposte:

Read the top of each page tab. It's pretty obvious what it is to anyone who actual reads it.

@verucalise: Just for some facts, everyone should turn a skeptical eye towards things like FastFood Nation and Super-Size Me: [skeptoid.com]

Ever watch "Bizarre Foods"? I'd say the label "food" is pretty subjective.

@verucalise: You know, I've found the hard way that too much greasy food will indeed lead to vomiting.

As much as I feel strange saying this (considering the fact that there's probably some interspecies spit transfer going on), dogburgermouth boy is kinda hot.

@henwy: The thing is that regardless of whether it's the ten most common ingredients overall or if it's the most common ingredients of several different categories, the gist of the article is that these things are not the horrible supertoxins that some people would make you believe they are.

@h3llc4t: Is it the bowl haircut, or what looks like a dead earthworm stuck through his ear that does it for you?

@HiPwr: I have a pair of dead earthworms that look very similar, but bigger. However, I cannot fully encapsulate the effect that pasty white skin and black hair has on me.

@hi: It is a substance used to flavor HFCS.

And to think all along I thought it was people. Tasty, tast people.

So just to be a bit contrarian here, aren't these ingredients the stuff that goes into the processing that produces the food? Right, yeah, I think that's established. McDonald's doesn't necessarily add Caramel Color to their food, but Coca-Cola does.

Given that, how different is fast food than processed food you buy in the stores? Yeah, I get that at the store you can buy organic and have other options. But if you're inclined to do that, you're probably not going to a McDonald's anyway. Does anyone actually believe that McDonald's food is organic?

@HappyMothersDay_GitEmSteveDave:

Listen bottom line is when Spurlock made this movie MCd's didn't have salads (not that I would eat one there) they forced Supersizing on people,and he wanted to prove you can't eat everything on the menu all day without exercise and moderation.

He went over the top but that is the only way most stupid Americans can understand things.

Which is why people like Hannity and O'Reilly as well as Michael Moore and Olberman are all very popular among their perspective audiences.

I could loose weight and eat just ice cream every day as long as I never once went over my 2000 cal limit.

I don't understand what the point of this story is. Of course there are many unusual ingredients in ALL processed food (including just about any packaged supermarket food). It's really the only way we can produce enough food to feed so many people, and so amazingly cheaply.

But really, on that list, there's not one thing listed there that's inherently unhealthy in reasonable amounts (like most things).

Referring to the list items as "non-food" and blaming the companies for calling them "components" instead of "ingredients" is pure semantics, and entirely sensationalist. There's no story here.

@humphrmi: I suppose it depends on what you buy in the store. Like Niacin is going to be hard to avoid -- fortification of grains with various B vitamins is one of the great achievements of nutrition science in the 20th century (along with D in your milk, iron in your OJ, etc.) in beating back nutrient-based malnutrition. But some of the other stuff is pretty gratuitous, nasty overprocessing, not "fortification that compensates for 'normal' processing" or "small-quantity additives that allow for longer-term storage" or whatever.

I bet if you looked at the REAL top ten ingredients by weight it would look something like

Hamburger
potatoes
flour (rolls)
Chicken
Whitefish patties
tomatoes
.....

Additive ingredients like those in the article would never approach the weight of the bulk menu items.

The article presentation sounds like it is trying to be "OOOh fast food is fake food." No. It's regular food prepared quickly with emphasis on taste.

@henwy: I read the whole article, including the top of the page tabs, and I don't think it's doing what you claim.

@ThunderSaid: Agreed. However, some additives can have profound effects on people even in tiny amounts, although those usually end up becoming illegal really quickly. By mass, fast food would look pretty similar to stuff you'd make in your own kitchen, especially if you decided to cut off items below 10% of the mass of the item.

I also find some problems in that they consider it incredible that a burger has over 60 ingredients, when they're also including the ingredients in the bun. Home cooks largely use processed bread from the shelves, just like what the fast food companies put the burgers on. Bread seems to be a universal problem, so I'd instead like to see bread-chemicals taken out of these comparisons.

The issues with fast food seems more to be in the preparation of the items. They use more saturated fat and salt than almost any home cook would use and in large portions, spurring obesity and hypertension, and they rely on chemicals and processing to lengthen supply lines, which often involves suppressing or removing nutrients.

@ThunderSaid: Yes, at one point they mention something scoring on a "tally." They seem to have been counting the number of appearances on ingredient lists. So it's ultimately a list of the ingredients that appear in the highest percentage of fast-food items.

@TVarmy: Let me just make this clear: I believe in consumer choice, but I think we need to have informed consumers. Nutritional facts and ingredient lists should be available and listed along with the packaging of the items, preferably also with calorie counts on the menu. Rational agents acting in their self interest need to know what's going on before they make good decisions.

@rpm773: Xanthan Gum is actually a really fascinating additive.

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): I think the main point to understand is that fast food is primarily engineered to maximize the efficiency of the process of producing and preparing it, not to maximize nutritional value. That's why you see a lot of this junk in it...they're trying to take the human factor out of the process of food preparation, and make it semi-automated and mindless.

calling fast food 'food' - is like pretending that the reconstituted chemical sheet which comprises the bulk of pre-made cigarettes, is 'tobacco.'

Based on the US cancer and obesity stats, few Americans have either eaten real food (or for that matter, smoked genuine tobacco), in quite a long time.

@Skankingmike: "respective" audiences?

True, you might be able to lose weight and eat ice cream every day if you stayed below 2000 calories. But you wouldn't be healthy at all.

@Skankingmike: Co-sign.

It's hard to go up against a corporate giant with billions of dollars in advertising dedicated to convincing you to eat their product for breakfast, snacks, lunch and dinner. Sure a lot of what he said was hyperbole, but it got people's attention and his small budget documentary helped make significant much needed changes. I mean, apples as a side?? Who would've thought that would happen at McD's? Just because it's fast doesn't mean it has to be artery clogging and 10x a normal serving size.

real food is for pussies lol

@Ian Fraser: Disgusting.

Thanks the bastard in the photo, we'll all die from Dog Flu!

These aren't all weird, really:

10. Citric Acid - Vitamin C, who *hasn't* had that? It's a natural component of citrus fruit! Natural Food (source: lemons, etc).

9. High-fructose Corn Syrup - I'm sure you've used corn syrup before. You probably wouldn't do what these guys do with it, but it isn't all that uncommon. High-fructose just means it has been modified (with enzymes) to add more fructose flavour to it. Semi-Natural Food (source: Corn + enzymes).

8. Caramel Color - Is this really all that weird? You haven't used caramel in cooking before? At least it's a natural colourant. Natural Food (source: Sugar).

7. Salt - Need I say anything? Natural Food.

6. Monosodium Glutamate - You can easily purchase this at your local grocers for home cooking. I did it once. It adds a very meaty flavour. It's also found in breastmilk. Non-natural Food.

5. Niacin - AKA Vitamin B3, a common supplement in multivtiamins. It's added to white bread by government decree to prevent disease (yours, not the wheat--bleaching the wheat strips out the niacin). It's like iodine in salt and it's a smart thing for the government to do. Natural Food (source: Wheat).

4. Soybean Oil - Ummm... okay, it's oil. I know you're all used to using vegetable oil, but this is just another oil. Nothing to see here. Natural Food.

3. Mono- and Diglyceride - Not something you'd use for home cooking. Used to blend together ingredients that won't normally blend (eg: Oil/water). Not food.

2. Xanthan Gum - Used as a thickener. You wouldn't use this in home cooking. Not food.

1. Chicken - Yep, natural food.

So, 8 out of 10 are food. 6 out of 10 are derived quite directly from natural sources. That isn't so bad.

Not saying fast food is _healthy_, but it's not really _less_ healthy than drinking all-natural gravy, or eating all-food pork rinds/pork brains.

@Skankingmike: "they forced Supersizing on people" Hmm, forced a funnel down the throat and massaged the gullet, did they? How about some personal responsibility? Part of what angered me about Supersize Me was the premise that if Spurlock was asked if he wanted the meal supersized, he HAD to say yes.

@shepd:
Xantham gum is available at most grocery stores. And as far as being un-natural, it's really no different than beer, which is the by-product of a micro-organism consuming something aka fermentation...

[www.amazon.com]

[www.wisegeek.com]

@shepd: Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, not citric acid. That said, I am completely underwhelmed by the list of "most common" (ie. most frequently occurring, not most-ingested by weight) ingredients. Ho hum.

@MauriceCallidice: By not making healthier options clear and available, yes they did and to some extent still do compel people who are hungry and in a hurry to supersize their meals. For myself, I do take the personal responsibility part seriously. My most common McDonalds order is a hamburger (regular sized) and a milk.

@Skankingmike: An ice cream cone is my very favorite fast food meal. One dip. It is one of the lowest calorie options, it's cheap, it ties me over to mealtime, and I think there's a little bit of milk in there that makes it healthier than a candy bar.

If I had the voice for it, I'd sing the "Two all-beef patties..." jingle, only include all 67 ingredients.
If I had the voice for it.

...Although, if there's ever a task that's screaming to be done in Consumer Union's Cone Room of Silent Death, while wearing a lab coat, and chaps*, on-camera, this is it.

* Because, c'mon, what musical isn't improved by the wearing of chaps?

@TVarmy: Sorry, I still think that 60 ingredients is way excessive. Bread only requires like 5 ingredients. Most of the rest of that stuff is only there for reasons of shelf-stability, ease of handling, etc.