Wired Snaps Into The Slim Jim, Exposes Its Innards

Since the beginning of time, scientists have always thought Slim Jims were made up solely of everlasting beef and awesome, but Wired has dug a little deeper and examined the true contents of the checkout aisle wonder.

Among the ingredients: mechanically separated chicken (yum!), corn and wheat proteins, dextrose, salt and… potentially lethal sodium nitrite?!

Wired explains about the latter:

Cosmetically, this is added to sausage because it combines with myoglobin in animal muscle to keep it from turning gray. Antibiotically, it inhibits botulism. Toxicologically, 6 grams of the stuff-roughly the equivalent of 1,400 Slim Jims-can kill you. So go easy there, champ.

I don’t know about you, but as an occasional Slim Jim chomper, the fact that there’s a potentially dangerous preservative in there makes me feel all the more tougher for wolfing it down and surviving to boast. Macho Man Randy Savage would be proud.

What’s inside a Slim Jim? [Wired]
(Photo: wring)
(Thanks, Joanne!)