Since there are so many things I can't eat, I'm pretty much stuck with plain burger patties. Fast food chains are about the only places I can go. McDonald's, Burger King, A&W, Wendy's.... Such chains don't use fillers in their burgers, whereas other places might.
Not fillers per say, but, there is some additives that are kind of hard to discover without deep digging
While the Golden Arches discloses that beef is the only ingredient in their patty, they stray away from mentioning how their cattle are raised. A
2017 report by several public interest organizations,
Chain Reaction III, reveals that although McDonald's announced a goal to curb the use of medically-important antibiotics in their beef supply, the company's "Vision on Antibiotic Stewardship" ultimately never established a deadline.
Other popular burger chains guilty of using medically-important antibiotics in their 100 percent beef patties include Burger King and Jack in the Box, which both failed to set time-bound commitments to ceasing use of the meds.
Fast food chains, such as
Wendy's and McDonald's, have vowed to reduce their use of antibiotics on meat, but until government agencies enforce regulations against the injudicious use of antibiotics on meat, consider making your own hamburger at home with organic, grass-fed beef.
Most fast food chains are transparent about their meat's production process, but the other ingredients that go into their beef patties? It gets murky. For example, Jack in the Box states that it uses 100 percent beef in its burgers, but a comprehensive
Ingredient & Allergen Statement lists a slew of other ingredients found in the patty including saturated-fat-filled hydrogenated cottonseed oil, natural flavors, corn fiber, corn starch, and sugar.
Then, there's this....
A&W also boasts that its burgers are made of 100 percent beef, but a closer look at the ingredient list
reveals that the chain adds some sketchy additives as seasoning—allowing them to make good on their claim that the burger is, in fact, only ground beef. The seasoning includes ingredients such as appetite-spiking MSG derivatives, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, sugar, cornstarch, and silicon dioxide (an anti-caking agent).
That's the reason I don't do fast food.