The McRib is a sandwich that consists of a restructured boneless pork burger shaped like miniature ribs, barbecue sauce, onions and pickles, served on a 5 ½ inch (14 cm) roll. Meat restructuring was developed by the U. S. Army to provide low-cost meat to troops in the field.
McDonald's claims that the sandwich is mainly made of shoulder meat, but Chicago Magazine reported that it actually contains restructured meat products such as heart, calluses and scalded stomach. The McRib is made from a restructured pork burger, formed into a small rack shaped like ribs and then covered with barbecue sauce, white onions and pickles. It is not made from real ribs, but from any part of the animal. The pie used in the McRib sandwich in the past was made from composite ground pork shoulder.
According to McDonald's nutritional data, the McRib sandwich contains approximately 70 ingredients, including a flour whitening agent used in yoga mats. Azodicarbonamide is a flour bleaching agent that, when not used in McRib buns, lives on gym mats, yoga mats, and shoe soles. McDonald's has always known about its customers' strange obsession with the McRib sandwich and its marketing takes full advantage of its limited availability. The sandwich was first introduced in 1981 and has been reintroduced and discontinued several times since then.
Last November, the Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against Smithfield Foods, the pork supplier of McDonald's mcrib meat, alleging that the meat distributor houses its pigs in unethical farm conditions. McRib lovers are fanatics, but it wouldn't be like that if the phenomenon hadn't had decades to marinate in the hearts and minds of its fans. Rene Arend came up with the idea and design of the McRib, but it's a professor at the University of Nebraska named Richard Mandigo who developed the restructured meat product that McRib is actually made of. So now you know what's inside a McRib sandwich. Is anyone still hungry or have I taken away your appetite? Maybe all the nutritional facts, animal cruelty descriptions, and strange ingredients didn't affect you. Now do you think the McRib is disgusting or did you always find it disgusting and not worth eating? It would be incredibly difficult for McDonald's to create more McRib-style products, because that cult following is very difficult to replicate.
