Asphyxiation And Hamburger Meat
On the day I learned that David Carradine died of what’s looking more and more like a session of autoerotic asphyxiation gone horribly awry, I also learned that the burgers I’ve been enjoying since childhood contain less than 15% actual meat.
According to this study, what you’re eating isn’t all that appetizing:
Meat content in the hamburgers ranged from 2.1% to 14.8% (median, 12.1%). The cost per gram of hamburger ranged from $0.02 to $0.16 (median, $0.03) and did not correlate with meat content. Electron microscopy showed relatively preserved skeletal muscle. A variety of tissue types besides skeletal muscle were observed including connective tissue (n = 8), blood vessels (n = 8), peripheral nerve (n = 8), adipose tissue (n = 7), plant material (n = 4), cartilage (n = 3), and bone (n = 2). In 2 hamburgers, intracellular parasites (Sarcocystis) were identified. Approximately half of their weight is made up of water.
Great. Just great. I’ll never be able to look at my burger with the same childlike, glassy-eyed, pseudo reverence again. Now I know how these fast food joints can sell their food so cheaply and yet still manage to make a profit.
And I fear that whenever I do sneak a burger it’ll forever remind me of David Carradine and Michael Hutchence. I can see it now. There I’ll be, sitting in a greasy booth with my fellow coworkers, the skin of my forearms fused to the sticky surface of the faux marble table top, eyeing my bone chip, arterial matter, and connective tissue burger when I not-so-subtlety blurt out, “So, did you know that some people get off by choking themselves?”
This day has irrevocably changed my life for the worse. Thank goodness it’s Friday…
