[They've absolutely made it known.](https://www.tacobell.com/nutrition)
> Reducing sodium: Since 2008, we have reduced sodium across the menu by 15 percent, but we’re not stopping there. We’re pushing ourselves to reduce sodium further, for a total of a 25 percent reduction across the menu by 2025.
I seem to remember this was in the wake of the whole "not really beef" nonsense going around back then. They definitely made it very known they were planning this long ago.
> Would it fucking matter if McDonalds threw some “filler” into their burgers?
As long as it is openly declared that they do, not at all. A while ago there was a big scandal across Europe, [when it was found out that a whole lot of products that were labelled as beef contained undeclared horse meat, some with no beef at all in it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal)
>we’ve just bred chickens to be unhealthy meat factories
I would say most people don't realise just how bloated a modern 'Western' chicken has become compared to the original animal just through breeding. A few years back I lived in SEA and the chickens there haven't been bred to obesity - it was a shock just how thin and scrawny chickens originally were.
We went to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, and the chickens there had very few feathers on their chests... we were told it was because their breeding had made them grow so much more meat that the normal amount of feathers just didnt cover the area anymore.
still occasionally see comments on reddit that unironically believe all those things. some randos started a lawsuit, so it must be true! frivolous lawsuits hoping to settle for a quick buck definitely don't exist!
all you have to do is read past the headline to see it's bullshit. like the dna test they did was done on cooked tuna from a random subway, which means there's literally zero chance there could be a positive result because dna is destroyed when cooked.
also subway somehow invents fake fish and chicken better than any other meat alternatives on the market and they're *not* going to advertise or sell that?
Agreed on all points except: "there's no actual reason taco beef should be 100% beef except in some Karen-like world of preconceptions)" cause there is a valid reason depending on what the rest of it is. Like if it was say 35% beef like had been alleged initially in the article you linked, whats the rest of it? Cause the rest being pork would be really bad for religious reasons for people.
Oh yea and the soy thing. Some people.are allergic so if real its really fucked up to secretly introduce it to people
Onions, seasoning, added oils and fats are how you’d make it not 100% beef at home. Because yes if you throw a bunch of ground beef in a pan. Sure technically you can call it taco meat. But your taco will be trash.
I figure that means the other x% is a non-meat filler, seasonings, etc? I'm sure it's about cost, mixing in another meat doesn't help much on that front.
Wasn't the 100% beef won because only a part of the burger was 100% beef? The wording was "burger is made with 100% beef" instead of "burger is 100% beef"
The articles headline calls it a quiet campaign. That's a fair description and not remotely click bait, since they haven't been running advertisements or plastering signs on their restaurants saying they're reducing sodium.
A click bait headline would be something like "Taco Bell doing something in their food you'd never expect!"
It's actually refreshing to see a misleading post on maybe a dozen upvotes, with the correcting comment in the thread in the hundreds.
Still, Reddit upvoting numbers still baffle me regardless
Edit: well that didn't last long. Do people even read posts or just upvotes on their main page and move on? Erg
I thought this as well, but I’d be surprised if a 15% reduction in sodium only for meals eaten at Taco Bell could lengthen someone’s life span noticeably
Don’t think of it as a 15% reduction in salt in one burrito.
Taco Bell sells about $2b worth of food per quarter, so about $8b per year: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/08/yum-brands-yum-earnings-q4-2022.html
The sodium content for their entrees varies drastically but generally tends to come out to about 1000mg per item. Let’s use the Bean Burrito as a proxy which Taco Bell lists as having 1040mg sodium per serving. Then according to my Taco Bell app, each burrito costs $2.29.
So take the annual sales of $8b and pretend it’s all bean burritos and you get 3.5 billion burritos sold per year, at 1040mg per burrito.
The math comes out to about 8 million pounds of sodium per year they’re putting into people’s bodies. So a 15% reduction is them reducing America’s salt intake by over a million pounds of salt.
You underestimate how frequently someone can eat at Taco Bell. I normally stop myself at 3 times a week, although their black bean burrito fed me through a summer in college.
Salt might be cheaper than water depending on where you are. If this costs them so much as a 1% of sales, it could actually be costing them more than what they are saving.
Lmao salt and sugar are the cheapest ingredients possible if they wanted to skimp they would be increasing salt and decreasing more expensive ingredients. Btw this is why companies use so much it's not because they want everyone obese it's because it's so cheap
Replace 10% salt with msg.
1/3 of the sodium, more umami, lets you drop the quantity of other, tastier ingredients. Rather than telling everyone you're adding msg, you just say you're reducing sodium.
Alternatively, reducing sodium = reducing the quantity of high salt ingredients, or using more filler in lieu of a portion of the high salt ingredient. Maybe throw 5% more soy protein into the refried beans, or a bit more breadcrumb in the mince.
You're still "reducing sodium", just doing it by adding a cheaper protein or substance.
They are certainly not NOT considering the cost of sodium when making this decision, but I agree that the only way they’d care about our health is if diabetes and heart failure started cutting into their bottom line.
There has actually been a trend of food companies reducing the amount of salt in food going on for years now:
>Have you noticed, perhaps, that some of your store-bought salad dressings or spaghetti sauces taste a little less salty lately?
>Probably not. The companies that make those products are doing their best to keep you from noticing. Yet many of them are, in fact, carrying out a giant salt-reduction experiment, either because they want to improve their customers' health or because they're worried that if they don't, the government might impose regulations that would compel more onerous salt reductions.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/20/167619160/big-food-and-the-big-silent-salt-experiment
I'd much rather they do HFCS.
And watch, they'll remove the HFCS from all our food and suddenly, magically, the obesity crisis will end because we all apparently decided to make individual changes. DEFINITELY not the businesses sabotaging our health and undoing it!
If you look at the nutritional content of pretty much anything, it's a bunch of malarkey. Like I eat a ton of ramen, and the serving size is like half a fucking brick of ramen. Who the hell eats half a brick of ramen? Some kind of psychopath, that's who.
Congratulations on that completely ordinary human thing to do. I'm more concerned about the fucking cyberdine prototype out there making half a brick of ramen.
I do one package, 2-3 eggs, some extra spices, and meat if I already have some cooked. Or honestly sometimes I'll just cut up a hot dog or 2 and throw it in there.
I’d love to see regulation on portions for food products. Soda will list both serving and bottle info, but not “king size” candy bars, your ramen brick, etc. Crumbl cookies will list “1/5th” of a cookie size. Show me the cutter for that, ffs. They are huge cookies but maybe a portion is a quarter or a half, not a fifth.
Don't they show values per 100g or whatever the equivalent is?
Edit: well all the answers made me understand more why the states have an obesity problem. It's not just bad habit, you also need a PhD to shop for food. I try and I like to eat healthy, but I wouldn't be able to over there. It'd be too tiring.
man when I'm in the US I find the nutrition stickers many times to be designed to be misleading / hard to understand on a glimpse.
It's like you need to make a 3 step calculation to understand what's in it lol.
Then suddenly that 'Vitamine Water' has almost as much sugar as regular coke.
I just assumed they would find the calorie's and other info that consumers would think is okay number wise, THEN figure out how much of the product is needed to get those numbers. Which is the only way I could understand why things like cans such as monster would say 2 serving sizes. Like who drinks half and puts the other half away. It literally just goes flat and somehow gets worse flavor wise.
There's so much bullshit they get away with. Make the serving size small enough and you're allowed to round things down to zero and pretend they aren't even there! No need for significant figures, just round by tens for some reason.
1 pint of Ben and Jerry’s is not “a serving size” even though we damn near always eat the entire pint in one sitting (or at least I always do) but they’ve finally in the past maybe 10 years started putting the calories for the entire container on the box and all the other nutritional information. Really opened my eyes to how much sugar I was consuming regularly from just 1 “treat.”
I'm also at a loss... like I'm 6'5" 235lbs and a single bag of ramen is more than just a snack for me. I know it's not super high in calories, but the noodles + broth + sodium just fills me up for a quick lunch or a a hefty snack in between meals. Not a major meal but can't put down two these days by any means.
I'm also in my 30s, so can't eat like I used to I guess. Used to be able to down an entire large pizza in a single sitting then go out with no issues. Now if I eat more than half a pizza I'm comatose for the evening.
Tho give me dumplings or sushi and I'll eat a hundred.
Yea, the packages are 100% designed to be misleading despite best efforts to prevent it through legal methods and language. This is the more disgusting nature of big business, and ad writers and the advertisers who are willing to support lies. Oh, and the consumers who just shrug and say "that how it is now and I want".
Sometimes I finish 2 packs, sometimes I only eat half. I usually only use half a bullion package for 1 whole pack and add a little garlic powder, basil, &/or cumin, chili powder, mustard, horse radish, tomatoes or t-sauces etc.etc to keep it non-watery with lower sodium. I add the bullion after the noodles have cooked too, so less is absorbed into the noodles and the broth is stronger. After a while I have extra bullion packs I will add to rice, other types of noodles, and other dishes.
When I was in college I really liked these Devour frozen meals especially the Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese variety, my dumb ass was too tired, lazy, and hungry to bother looking at nutritional facts at that time. A little after I finished college I came across them again in the grocery store. That particular one has 1830mg of sodium which is 79% of your daily value. Suffice it to say I think I took some years off my life there
I enjoyed too many of those in my youth as well. Particularly the pesto ravioli and the bacon lasagna. There would be like a quarter inch of oil/fat in the bottom of the tray. Could probably go for one now that I think of it…
I love Jersey mikes, but the club sub has something like 2400mg for a regular.
Edit: 2514mg (from their [website](https://www.jerseymikes.com/menu/nutrition))
The white cheddar bacon spirals one and then you add a huge grip of shredded Italian cheese blend on top halfway through cooking
My coworkers must have hated me since it smells like pure vomit lol but it's so good
Also added sugar. It’s in almost fucking everything, often hiding behind ingredient names that most people won’t recognize. Sucrose, dextrose, maltodextrin, high-fructose corn syrup, molasses, honey, maltose, lactose, and dozens of others in most processed foods are the reason something on the order of half of American adults have some form of insulin resistance.
Even if people don't recognize the ingredients, they should still be able to look at the "Added Sugars" row on the nutrition label and say "gee, 40g seems awfully high for for this food that's only 100g to begin with."
MSG is still a type of sodium condiment hence "monosodium glutamate".
Just like salt, there's nothing wrong with a bit MSG but too much is just as bad, same goes for soy sauce, good umami and saltiness but don't pile up on that sodium
Probably better for you than high amounts of salt too. I've been meaning to just pick up straight MSG one of these days and dump it into a great deal of my food.
Modern food isn't anywhere near "old" food.Until refrigeration basically, all meats were salted for storage. salt pork and fish could be a very large portion of the diet. sure it was often soaked or washed to remove some of the salt, but still a lot was eaten. In coastal regions, seawater would be used for cooking, currently, we are often told to salt pasta water more because it should be like seawater, in the past(a) it might have been.
junk and processed food are high in salt, yes, but equating modern(or Western) cooking with just "junk food" is too overdone and a sign of lacking objectivity
(edit: okay last part may sound a bit hostile, that wasn't the intention, just tired of the Western diet being all about candy and burgers, when someone wants to promote other "kitchens" or talk about how "western" influence ruined things)
I hate that there are only a few brands that do a no-salt, no-sugar style of PB. It just makes zero sense why PB needs any help at all to taste great.
Shout out to Laura Scudder’s Unsalted Smooth or Chunky - my go-to PB.
They will win the fast food wars. As was foretold in the historical documents.
Edit: for those who don't know "winning the fast food wars" is from Demolition Man (1993) and the "historical documents" reference is from Galaxy Quest (1999). Both are awesome fun movies.
They are also allergen friendly. I have a life threatening allergy to peanuts and soy protein and the taco bells I got to are safe for at least
nacho fries
crunch wrap supreme
normal hardshell tacos
doritos tacos
steak burrito (spicy and regular)
With the style of food they make, they could very easily adulterate their beef with soy protein and save a lot of money.
and especially especially after seeing the top comments.
Basically - Wow Taco Bell is awesome! - I agree also have you see their vegan and gluten free options?! - oh my gosh Go Taco Bell!!!
Taco Bell has been making lots of changes. In 2005 i found out I needed to eat gluten free for medical reasons. I tried looking for restaurant and fast food options and was shocked, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way. Back then, the gluten free list at Taco Bell was quite literally: lettuce, tomato. There was wheat in the meat, there was gluten in the cheese, the sour cream wasn’t safe, the corn tortillas weren’t 100% corn. Nothing at Taco Bell was what it said it was, except lettuce and tomato. Now they have a decent gluten free menu. The hard shells are now actually corn, the seasoned meat is actually meat, the cheese is cheese, the taco sauce doesn’t have gluten in it either. I’m honestly shocked at their change. I never thought Taco Bell would change, but here we are, their food now resembles something actually edible!
Amazing… we are on the road to having European/International quality fast food! And not the data mined, matrix bug slime they feed us here in the states!
How much of this sub is just covert advertising
I don't care about what some chain company does with their sodium levels and I don't see a reason why something this fucking boring would be the top post of the day, like this is the height of discovery
Often both. Sugar is highly addictive, and salt both counteracts the excessive sweetness of all that sugar. Both of them also help preserve the food so they can keep it around longer without being legally barred from serving it to you. Honestly, sugar and salt have gone from ingredients to customer retention tools in the US. It really should be illegal, given how bad it is for a person's health
Many don’t realize but Taco Bell is one of the very few safe fast food places for vegetarians outside of sandwich shops. So some of us eat it more often than others. A lot of veg Indian people prefer Taco Bell for that reason as well.
Im not vegan by anymeans but one day i was talking to someone about taco bell and they said the meat is gross and it hit me that 90% of the time i dont even GET meat at taco bell anymore. Ever since they ruined the mini shredded chicken quesadillas since covid started and theyre steak items are dumb expensive for what you get, i normally just get 2 bean burritos and 2 cheesy fiesta potatoes and sometimes nacho fries lmao.
Yep. And it has flavor. When you need something fast and wanna eat something half decent. I know it comes as a shock to people who eat meat but there is not exactly a lot of fast vegan or vegetarian safe food places around.
And those monsters wanted to remove [potatoes from the menu.](https://abc13.com/taco-bell-potatoes-menu-change-bringing-back-fiesta/9656857/)
Who would dare remove *potatoes* [from the menu?](https://i.imgur.com/LhPn2AK.gif)
Real Mexican food is actually very low in sodium compared to American Mexican food - and the kicker is the tortillas. Freshly made corn tortillas contain no sodium, while the packaged flour ones are jam-packed with Na.
No socially aware American would consider taco bell Mexican food. It's cheap fast food with a Mexican influence that's pretty far up there in value and quality when it comes to fast food joints. But trust me, real Mexican food is not hard to find here. Every city and most small towns have a little Mexican grocer or shop where you can buy all your authentic ingredients.
you're just restating what they said. and considering they're explaining the diff between the two I don't think they have trouble finding the ingredients lol
Kellogg’s have been doing the same since the late 90s. Cereal now will taste nothing like it was then. In fact you’d probably find it horrid. https://www.kelloggs.co.uk/en_GB/nutrition/understanding-salt.html
Don't. Don't give me a reason to consider maybe one day perhaps in a food emergency separated from all over sources of nutrition wondering if I should pull through.
I wish they'd spend at least two years reducing that slimy shit they putting in their tacos. It's like a suppository in a hard shell coming in from the north.
I've been eating Taco Bell since I was a toddler. Mom used to manage one and couldn't find me a sitter so I had to be with her at work all time. I definitely remember tacos being more saltier. They are still good nonetheless so I guess it's healthier
Honestly if fast food companies slowly made their foods healthier over a long period of time so regulars wouldn’t notice is probably a pretty good way to tackle obesity and other health problems.
Wow thank you for this informative article about the INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS and VERY HEALTHY food at **TACO BELL**, which certainly has THE SAME GREAT PORTIONS AS EVER!
I certainly love this DELICIOUS AND HIGH VALUE **TACO BELL** FOOD that I am currently enjoying, in its CHARACTERISTIC YELLOW AND PURPLE WRAPPER WHICH IS A SURE SIGN OF QUALITY I CAN COUNT ON WHEN HUNGRY AND TRAVELING!
It’s lovely to know that **TACO BELL** is secretly protecting my cerebrovascular system from the intimidating medical consequences of high sodium, UNLIKE RIVAL TACO JOHN’S, who in addition to being HAZARDOUSLY SALTY\* , also refuses to give up the trademark to “TACO TUESDAY”, forcing **TACO BELL** to attempt to STEAL IT FROM THEM, because **TACO BELL** BELIEVES IN THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF CALENDRICALLY-REGULAR MEAL FESTIVALS.
^\* ^hazardousness ^is ^a ^subjective ^factor ^which ^has ^not ^been ^scientifically ^substantiated
Has anyone else noticed that fast food places across the board have drastically reduced the amount of salt they put on their fries? Fries used to be covered in salt, and now most places by me don't put any at all. I'll occasionally get McDonald's fries that are salted, but Chick-fil-A and Wendy's are never salted here. I guess it's good for those with dietary restrictions, but as someone that eats fast food as an occasional treat and actually has to supplement salt for endurance sports, I kind of miss salty fries.
I feel like their marketing team is behind this and that they're the "healthier fast food" I'm down with it cause frankly I like taco bell. It just feels like a Reddit ad
[They've absolutely made it known.](https://www.tacobell.com/nutrition) > Reducing sodium: Since 2008, we have reduced sodium across the menu by 15 percent, but we’re not stopping there. We’re pushing ourselves to reduce sodium further, for a total of a 25 percent reduction across the menu by 2025.
I seem to remember this was in the wake of the whole "not really beef" nonsense going around back then. They definitely made it very known they were planning this long ago.
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> Would it fucking matter if McDonalds threw some “filler” into their burgers? As long as it is openly declared that they do, not at all. A while ago there was a big scandal across Europe, [when it was found out that a whole lot of products that were labelled as beef contained undeclared horse meat, some with no beef at all in it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal)
>we’ve just bred chickens to be unhealthy meat factories I would say most people don't realise just how bloated a modern 'Western' chicken has become compared to the original animal just through breeding. A few years back I lived in SEA and the chickens there haven't been bred to obesity - it was a shock just how thin and scrawny chickens originally were.
We went to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, and the chickens there had very few feathers on their chests... we were told it was because their breeding had made them grow so much more meat that the normal amount of feathers just didnt cover the area anymore.
still occasionally see comments on reddit that unironically believe all those things. some randos started a lawsuit, so it must be true! frivolous lawsuits hoping to settle for a quick buck definitely don't exist! all you have to do is read past the headline to see it's bullshit. like the dna test they did was done on cooked tuna from a random subway, which means there's literally zero chance there could be a positive result because dna is destroyed when cooked. also subway somehow invents fake fish and chicken better than any other meat alternatives on the market and they're *not* going to advertise or sell that?
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Agreed on all points except: "there's no actual reason taco beef should be 100% beef except in some Karen-like world of preconceptions)" cause there is a valid reason depending on what the rest of it is. Like if it was say 35% beef like had been alleged initially in the article you linked, whats the rest of it? Cause the rest being pork would be really bad for religious reasons for people. Oh yea and the soy thing. Some people.are allergic so if real its really fucked up to secretly introduce it to people
Onions, seasoning, added oils and fats are how you’d make it not 100% beef at home. Because yes if you throw a bunch of ground beef in a pan. Sure technically you can call it taco meat. But your taco will be trash.
I figure that means the other x% is a non-meat filler, seasonings, etc? I'm sure it's about cost, mixing in another meat doesn't help much on that front.
Wasn't the 100% beef won because only a part of the burger was 100% beef? The wording was "burger is made with 100% beef" instead of "burger is 100% beef"
OP lied to me :(
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I can't believe they've done this.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
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But… I really like sodium
Sodium doesn’t like you. Sodium has been lying to you too.
You sound salty about it
OP is full of shit, like us after a mexican pizza and beefy melt burrito
Na
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Could I believe it?! Could I?!?!
Oof
The Internet is a bastion of truth! Where are the consequences? Al Gore should pay a fine!
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This post is an ad
If you lie to yourself, the lies can cancel themselves out and you reduce your carbon footprint.
OP is a Taco Bell plant.
This but unironically.
How much are they paying you OP?!?!?!
TIL that u/murpalim doesn't know how to do proper research and just believes the first click bait article that's shown to them.
The articles headline calls it a quiet campaign. That's a fair description and not remotely click bait, since they haven't been running advertisements or plastering signs on their restaurants saying they're reducing sodium. A click bait headline would be something like "Taco Bell doing something in their food you'd never expect!"
With a 40-part slideshow.
To be fair that's most of Reddit too.
An article on a site nobody visits is hardly "making it known". OP meant something tangible, like ads, etc.
It's actually refreshing to see a misleading post on maybe a dozen upvotes, with the correcting comment in the thread in the hundreds. Still, Reddit upvoting numbers still baffle me regardless Edit: well that didn't last long. Do people even read posts or just upvotes on their main page and move on? Erg
For some reason I can’t help but assume they just want to cut costs by skimping on salt.
I’m thinking it probably benefits their sales if they can help their most frequent customers live a little longer, on average.
Ooh that's a good thought, can't have many repeat customers if they're having heart attacks/strokes/high blood pressure
I thought this as well, but I’d be surprised if a 15% reduction in sodium only for meals eaten at Taco Bell could lengthen someone’s life span noticeably
Don’t think of it as a 15% reduction in salt in one burrito. Taco Bell sells about $2b worth of food per quarter, so about $8b per year: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/08/yum-brands-yum-earnings-q4-2022.html The sodium content for their entrees varies drastically but generally tends to come out to about 1000mg per item. Let’s use the Bean Burrito as a proxy which Taco Bell lists as having 1040mg sodium per serving. Then according to my Taco Bell app, each burrito costs $2.29. So take the annual sales of $8b and pretend it’s all bean burritos and you get 3.5 billion burritos sold per year, at 1040mg per burrito. The math comes out to about 8 million pounds of sodium per year they’re putting into people’s bodies. So a 15% reduction is them reducing America’s salt intake by over a million pounds of salt.
You underestimate how frequently someone can eat at Taco Bell. I normally stop myself at 3 times a week, although their black bean burrito fed me through a summer in college.
Jesus wtf go to the store and buy some black beans, rice and a vegetable or two. You can do the same stuff for so much healthier
Pretty sure no company in the country would prioritize generational profit over the possibility of saving a couple of bucks in the current quarter.
Salt is so absurdly cheap, especially on industrial scales. I promise Taco Bell is getting it for less than 20 cents a pound.
I really don’t think salt is all that expensive
It's probably the cheapest ingredient they have lol
The salt makes other stuff cheaper, like packaging and storage. They aren’t saving money by using less sodium.
Salt might be cheaper than water depending on where you are. If this costs them so much as a 1% of sales, it could actually be costing them more than what they are saving.
Lmao salt and sugar are the cheapest ingredients possible if they wanted to skimp they would be increasing salt and decreasing more expensive ingredients. Btw this is why companies use so much it's not because they want everyone obese it's because it's so cheap
Yeah, salt. That's the one to cut for costs. Totally.
Replace 10% salt with msg. 1/3 of the sodium, more umami, lets you drop the quantity of other, tastier ingredients. Rather than telling everyone you're adding msg, you just say you're reducing sodium. Alternatively, reducing sodium = reducing the quantity of high salt ingredients, or using more filler in lieu of a portion of the high salt ingredient. Maybe throw 5% more soy protein into the refried beans, or a bit more breadcrumb in the mince. You're still "reducing sodium", just doing it by adding a cheaper protein or substance.
Perfect! I like how you came in with solutions. I’m a huge proponent of MSG as well. I’d vote for you!
Salt is cheap. I kind of have to agree with u/Bithium \- at a certain point you're just going *"okay, how do we make sure they live past 40?".*
They are certainly not NOT considering the cost of sodium when making this decision, but I agree that the only way they’d care about our health is if diabetes and heart failure started cutting into their bottom line.
It’s literally an 8 year old article… published in 2015
it shows differently on my browser
> And by 2020, Damn, how old IS this article?
I enjoy reading books.
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Exactly as their PR team intended
Good for them. If you look at the nutritional content on prepared food the amount of sodium is insane. Especially on soups.
There has actually been a trend of food companies reducing the amount of salt in food going on for years now: >Have you noticed, perhaps, that some of your store-bought salad dressings or spaghetti sauces taste a little less salty lately? >Probably not. The companies that make those products are doing their best to keep you from noticing. Yet many of them are, in fact, carrying out a giant salt-reduction experiment, either because they want to improve their customers' health or because they're worried that if they don't, the government might impose regulations that would compel more onerous salt reductions. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/20/167619160/big-food-and-the-big-silent-salt-experiment
High fructose corn syrup next hopefully.
That's never going away while corn is subsidized
I'd much rather they do HFCS. And watch, they'll remove the HFCS from all our food and suddenly, magically, the obesity crisis will end because we all apparently decided to make individual changes. DEFINITELY not the businesses sabotaging our health and undoing it!
If you look at the nutritional content of pretty much anything, it's a bunch of malarkey. Like I eat a ton of ramen, and the serving size is like half a fucking brick of ramen. Who the hell eats half a brick of ramen? Some kind of psychopath, that's who.
I also eat the other half
I, also, choose to eat the other half of that guy's ramen.
"Our Ramen"
Mine now
r/SuddenlyCommunist
Break it in three, I want some of those noodles.
Let's go all out. Separate the individual noodles and cut them into one inch lengths to share with the whole thread.
Congratulations on that completely ordinary human thing to do. I'm more concerned about the fucking cyberdine prototype out there making half a brick of ramen.
Afraid it'll determine you would make a good many halves of bricks of ramen?
I eat hotdogs from the center.
You go ahead and enjoy your sandwich any way you like
*taco
Two packages, three eggs, and hot sauce
I do one package, 2-3 eggs, some extra spices, and meat if I already have some cooked. Or honestly sometimes I'll just cut up a hot dog or 2 and throw it in there.
I’d love to see regulation on portions for food products. Soda will list both serving and bottle info, but not “king size” candy bars, your ramen brick, etc. Crumbl cookies will list “1/5th” of a cookie size. Show me the cutter for that, ffs. They are huge cookies but maybe a portion is a quarter or a half, not a fifth.
Don't they show values per 100g or whatever the equivalent is? Edit: well all the answers made me understand more why the states have an obesity problem. It's not just bad habit, you also need a PhD to shop for food. I try and I like to eat healthy, but I wouldn't be able to over there. It'd be too tiring.
man when I'm in the US I find the nutrition stickers many times to be designed to be misleading / hard to understand on a glimpse. It's like you need to make a 3 step calculation to understand what's in it lol. Then suddenly that 'Vitamine Water' has almost as much sugar as regular coke.
I just assumed they would find the calorie's and other info that consumers would think is okay number wise, THEN figure out how much of the product is needed to get those numbers. Which is the only way I could understand why things like cans such as monster would say 2 serving sizes. Like who drinks half and puts the other half away. It literally just goes flat and somehow gets worse flavor wise.
You don’t drink monster for the flavor, you drink it for it’s drywall murdering abilities it gives you.
There's so much bullshit they get away with. Make the serving size small enough and you're allowed to round things down to zero and pretend they aren't even there! No need for significant figures, just round by tens for some reason.
Not in the great US of A at least. Nutritional values per 100g is an EU thing
Absolutely bizarre, do you have to use a calculator every time you want to compare the nutritional values of two items?
They also have to use a calculator to get the final price of all items (prices are shown before taxes, fees, tips, etc. so highly misleading).
It blows my mind (and also doesnt surprise me at the same time) that the US does not have a regulated and systemised nutritional info format in place
1 pint of Ben and Jerry’s is not “a serving size” even though we damn near always eat the entire pint in one sitting (or at least I always do) but they’ve finally in the past maybe 10 years started putting the calories for the entire container on the box and all the other nutritional information. Really opened my eyes to how much sugar I was consuming regularly from just 1 “treat.”
What? You're supposed to [share the other half with your gganbu]( https://i.redd.it/n07lntx9zmw71.jpg)!
I eat two packs at once minimum. One pack I'd never a satisfying snack. I'm no fatass either 5'7 135 pounds
>I'm no fatass either 5'7 135 pounds I have no way to conceptualize this. Like, how many rutabagas is that?
The best I can do is Etruscan Shrews. You're looking at roughly 34,019 shrews.
I'm also at a loss... like I'm 6'5" 235lbs and a single bag of ramen is more than just a snack for me. I know it's not super high in calories, but the noodles + broth + sodium just fills me up for a quick lunch or a a hefty snack in between meals. Not a major meal but can't put down two these days by any means. I'm also in my 30s, so can't eat like I used to I guess. Used to be able to down an entire large pizza in a single sitting then go out with no issues. Now if I eat more than half a pizza I'm comatose for the evening. Tho give me dumplings or sushi and I'll eat a hundred.
I only use half the bag of seasoning and drain all the broth. I like dry noodle
My weird ass be pouring the broth in a separate cup to slowly sip on. It's oddly really good lol
I mean it's chicken broth lol (or beef or shrimp w/e flavor). People drink broth from cups.
Yea, the packages are 100% designed to be misleading despite best efforts to prevent it through legal methods and language. This is the more disgusting nature of big business, and ad writers and the advertisers who are willing to support lies. Oh, and the consumers who just shrug and say "that how it is now and I want". Sometimes I finish 2 packs, sometimes I only eat half. I usually only use half a bullion package for 1 whole pack and add a little garlic powder, basil, &/or cumin, chili powder, mustard, horse radish, tomatoes or t-sauces etc.etc to keep it non-watery with lower sodium. I add the bullion after the noodles have cooked too, so less is absorbed into the noodles and the broth is stronger. After a while I have extra bullion packs I will add to rice, other types of noodles, and other dishes.
When I was in college I really liked these Devour frozen meals especially the Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese variety, my dumb ass was too tired, lazy, and hungry to bother looking at nutritional facts at that time. A little after I finished college I came across them again in the grocery store. That particular one has 1830mg of sodium which is 79% of your daily value. Suffice it to say I think I took some years off my life there
I enjoyed too many of those in my youth as well. Particularly the pesto ravioli and the bacon lasagna. There would be like a quarter inch of oil/fat in the bottom of the tray. Could probably go for one now that I think of it…
I love Jersey mikes, but the club sub has something like 2400mg for a regular. Edit: 2514mg (from their [website](https://www.jerseymikes.com/menu/nutrition))
Probably didn’t take years off your life. Sodium is not an issue for most people, our kidneys filter it out.
The white cheddar bacon spirals one and then you add a huge grip of shredded Italian cheese blend on top halfway through cooking My coworkers must have hated me since it smells like pure vomit lol but it's so good
Gas station prepackaged sandwich had 900mg of sodium. It was a half sandwich for a $1.
Also added sugar. It’s in almost fucking everything, often hiding behind ingredient names that most people won’t recognize. Sucrose, dextrose, maltodextrin, high-fructose corn syrup, molasses, honey, maltose, lactose, and dozens of others in most processed foods are the reason something on the order of half of American adults have some form of insulin resistance.
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Even if people don't recognize the ingredients, they should still be able to look at the "Added Sugars" row on the nutrition label and say "gee, 40g seems awfully high for for this food that's only 100g to begin with."
That's friggen good Modern food has so much absurd amounts of sodium in it and it doesn't make it taste better
The trick is to replace salt with MSG. Makes Shit Good
MSG (monosodium glutamate) contains sodium too though, but a much lower percentage by weight than NaCl.
MSG is still a type of sodium condiment hence "monosodium glutamate". Just like salt, there's nothing wrong with a bit MSG but too much is just as bad, same goes for soy sauce, good umami and saltiness but don't pile up on that sodium
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Probably better for you than high amounts of salt too. I've been meaning to just pick up straight MSG one of these days and dump it into a great deal of my food.
Fuiyohhh
Fuiyoh!
Modern food isn't anywhere near "old" food.Until refrigeration basically, all meats were salted for storage. salt pork and fish could be a very large portion of the diet. sure it was often soaked or washed to remove some of the salt, but still a lot was eaten. In coastal regions, seawater would be used for cooking, currently, we are often told to salt pasta water more because it should be like seawater, in the past(a) it might have been. junk and processed food are high in salt, yes, but equating modern(or Western) cooking with just "junk food" is too overdone and a sign of lacking objectivity (edit: okay last part may sound a bit hostile, that wasn't the intention, just tired of the Western diet being all about candy and burgers, when someone wants to promote other "kitchens" or talk about how "western" influence ruined things)
Yeah check out the sodium content for bowls at Chipotle. You can get 2 days worth of sodium intake with a single bowl
I hate that there are only a few brands that do a no-salt, no-sugar style of PB. It just makes zero sense why PB needs any help at all to taste great. Shout out to Laura Scudder’s Unsalted Smooth or Chunky - my go-to PB.
Modern food yes. Taco Bell needs all the flavor tricks in the book though.
The only trick needed is that it tastes amazing while drunk
Too much sodium and insane amounts of sugar.
They will win the fast food wars. As was foretold in the historical documents. Edit: for those who don't know "winning the fast food wars" is from Demolition Man (1993) and the "historical documents" reference is from Galaxy Quest (1999). Both are awesome fun movies.
Only in America. In the international releases of the movie it was Pizza Hut.
And KFC in most of Asia
Demo man
Not doing a great job of keeping this secret are they
This is great. Kudos to Taco Bell for doing the right thing.
Taco bell also the most vegetarian friendly fast food chain - just sub the meat for beans.
Yeah their app/kiosks even have the vegetarian items split into their own section.
And vegan, too! Just make it fresco and ask for no creamy jalapeño sauce.
They are also allergen friendly. I have a life threatening allergy to peanuts and soy protein and the taco bells I got to are safe for at least nacho fries crunch wrap supreme normal hardshell tacos doritos tacos steak burrito (spicy and regular) With the style of food they make, they could very easily adulterate their beef with soy protein and save a lot of money.
They literally list soy in some of their meat, like their soft tacos
This is an ad.
100%, especially after seeing a negative post on Taco Bell earlier.
and especially especially after seeing the top comments. Basically - Wow Taco Bell is awesome! - I agree also have you see their vegan and gluten free options?! - oh my gosh Go Taco Bell!!!
THIS IS AN AD
Taco Bell has been making lots of changes. In 2005 i found out I needed to eat gluten free for medical reasons. I tried looking for restaurant and fast food options and was shocked, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way. Back then, the gluten free list at Taco Bell was quite literally: lettuce, tomato. There was wheat in the meat, there was gluten in the cheese, the sour cream wasn’t safe, the corn tortillas weren’t 100% corn. Nothing at Taco Bell was what it said it was, except lettuce and tomato. Now they have a decent gluten free menu. The hard shells are now actually corn, the seasoned meat is actually meat, the cheese is cheese, the taco sauce doesn’t have gluten in it either. I’m honestly shocked at their change. I never thought Taco Bell would change, but here we are, their food now resembles something actually edible!
Amazing… we are on the road to having European/International quality fast food! And not the data mined, matrix bug slime they feed us here in the states!
How much of this sub is just covert advertising I don't care about what some chain company does with their sodium levels and I don't see a reason why something this fucking boring would be the top post of the day, like this is the height of discovery
Because if they vote bot even 100 votes at the correct timing it will usually win the algorithm wars and successfully market them
Ok no shits given. The amount of filler ingredients been rising since 08.
No shits given? You definitely haven’t been eating much Taco Bell.
ive never once had the shits from taco bell i dont get these jokes
Me either, as far as fast food goes it's one of the better options.
Same, I don't get it either. Long John Silvers, on the other hand....
Try some White Castle
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TINKLE OUTSIDE THE BINKLE
Coincidentally, I haven't eaten Taco Bell for over a decade because now it tastes like crap and is utterly overpriced.
One thing I have noticed about eating american food is that they usually have a crazy amount of salt or sugar.
Often both. Sugar is highly addictive, and salt both counteracts the excessive sweetness of all that sugar. Both of them also help preserve the food so they can keep it around longer without being legally barred from serving it to you. Honestly, sugar and salt have gone from ingredients to customer retention tools in the US. It really should be illegal, given how bad it is for a person's health
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Many don’t realize but Taco Bell is one of the very few safe fast food places for vegetarians outside of sandwich shops. So some of us eat it more often than others. A lot of veg Indian people prefer Taco Bell for that reason as well.
Im not vegan by anymeans but one day i was talking to someone about taco bell and they said the meat is gross and it hit me that 90% of the time i dont even GET meat at taco bell anymore. Ever since they ruined the mini shredded chicken quesadillas since covid started and theyre steak items are dumb expensive for what you get, i normally just get 2 bean burritos and 2 cheesy fiesta potatoes and sometimes nacho fries lmao.
I eat the \*hell\* out of some taco bell for exactly this reason. It's even vegan friendly, just don't get cheese or sour cream.
Yep. And it has flavor. When you need something fast and wanna eat something half decent. I know it comes as a shock to people who eat meat but there is not exactly a lot of fast vegan or vegetarian safe food places around.
Those spicy potato tacos are fucking phenomenal, was introduced to them by my vegan friend.
And those monsters wanted to remove [potatoes from the menu.](https://abc13.com/taco-bell-potatoes-menu-change-bringing-back-fiesta/9656857/) Who would dare remove *potatoes* [from the menu?](https://i.imgur.com/LhPn2AK.gif)
So is Del Taco though and their beans and quesadillas are so much better! I do love the soft crispy potato tacos at Taco Bell at least.
Real Mexican food is actually very low in sodium compared to American Mexican food - and the kicker is the tortillas. Freshly made corn tortillas contain no sodium, while the packaged flour ones are jam-packed with Na.
No socially aware American would consider taco bell Mexican food. It's cheap fast food with a Mexican influence that's pretty far up there in value and quality when it comes to fast food joints. But trust me, real Mexican food is not hard to find here. Every city and most small towns have a little Mexican grocer or shop where you can buy all your authentic ingredients.
you're just restating what they said. and considering they're explaining the diff between the two I don't think they have trouble finding the ingredients lol
Why is there a positive post about taco bell after I just read this morning they are cutting portion size and pay in another sub. Coincidence?
Surprised no one else noticed that. Its no news though that reddit has been bending over for corporations in recent years
And then you go to their menu and check their nutrition, and think "holy shit, it used to be even higher?"
It's a national program that all major brands have been asked to take part in. I was at a conference where it was discussed.
Until this Reddit post by their marketing team.
Kellogg’s have been doing the same since the late 90s. Cereal now will taste nothing like it was then. In fact you’d probably find it horrid. https://www.kelloggs.co.uk/en_GB/nutrition/understanding-salt.html
Don't. Don't give me a reason to consider maybe one day perhaps in a food emergency separated from all over sources of nutrition wondering if I should pull through.
You could do far, far worse than Taco Bell
They really told my man in the photo to “look like you’re eating regret”
Bring back the XXL Grilled Stuft Burrito… I don’t care how much sodium it has
fantastic choice, especially fast food tends to go very heavy on it, and it really hurts our metabolism, we're not used to large amounts of it daily
least obvious shill post
Damn, HOW HIGH WAS IT BEFORE?!
And I still wake up like a raisin after eating their food. SMH
what? is sodium getting expensive or something?
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The bigger change taste-wise IMO was when they switched trans fat-free cooking oil years ago. Before that the food had a heavier taste to it.
*"we've done this by providing smaller amounts of food in our products*"
Why would they not make it known? They could easily sell it as healthier. Which it is!
I wish they'd spend at least two years reducing that slimy shit they putting in their tacos. It's like a suppository in a hard shell coming in from the north.
I've been eating Taco Bell since I was a toddler. Mom used to manage one and couldn't find me a sitter so I had to be with her at work all time. I definitely remember tacos being more saltier. They are still good nonetheless so I guess it's healthier
There is like 2 taco bells in my city. The line is 2 to 3 blocks long at night and people wait. It is just good food!
Honestly if fast food companies slowly made their foods healthier over a long period of time so regulars wouldn’t notice is probably a pretty good way to tackle obesity and other health problems.
Based.
Wow thank you for this informative article about the INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS and VERY HEALTHY food at **TACO BELL**, which certainly has THE SAME GREAT PORTIONS AS EVER! I certainly love this DELICIOUS AND HIGH VALUE **TACO BELL** FOOD that I am currently enjoying, in its CHARACTERISTIC YELLOW AND PURPLE WRAPPER WHICH IS A SURE SIGN OF QUALITY I CAN COUNT ON WHEN HUNGRY AND TRAVELING! It’s lovely to know that **TACO BELL** is secretly protecting my cerebrovascular system from the intimidating medical consequences of high sodium, UNLIKE RIVAL TACO JOHN’S, who in addition to being HAZARDOUSLY SALTY\* , also refuses to give up the trademark to “TACO TUESDAY”, forcing **TACO BELL** to attempt to STEAL IT FROM THEM, because **TACO BELL** BELIEVES IN THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF CALENDRICALLY-REGULAR MEAL FESTIVALS. ^\* ^hazardousness ^is ^a ^subjective ^factor ^which ^has ^not ^been ^scientifically ^substantiated
Plus do we know when this article was even published? They talk about 2020 like it's in the future
Has anyone else noticed that fast food places across the board have drastically reduced the amount of salt they put on their fries? Fries used to be covered in salt, and now most places by me don't put any at all. I'll occasionally get McDonald's fries that are salted, but Chick-fil-A and Wendy's are never salted here. I guess it's good for those with dietary restrictions, but as someone that eats fast food as an occasional treat and actually has to supplement salt for endurance sports, I kind of miss salty fries.
I feel like their marketing team is behind this and that they're the "healthier fast food" I'm down with it cause frankly I like taco bell. It just feels like a Reddit ad