What’s Really In Your Fast Food?

You don’t wanna know…

Using a technique that identifies carbon and nitrogen isotopes in meat, co-authors A. Hope Jahren and Rebecca Kraft tried to determine the animals’ diets and in what conditions they were raised. Based on the high levels of carbon and nitrogen isotopes found in the meat products, the authors claim that the cattle and poultry were predominantly fed corn, which makes them as fat as possible in as short a time as possible, and were raised in extreme confinement.

In an interview, Jahren, who is a geobiologist and professor at the University of Hawaii, even suggested that the nitrogen isotopic signatures found in meat products were so high that they were consistent with environments where animals had consumed their own waste.

What’s Really In Your Fast Food? - Forbes.com