Saturday 29 September 2012

Hamburgers or Wraps, facts




“The sandwich that has taken over the world, the hamburger two pieces of baked dough with diced and chopped cooked beef in between”

So what effect other than excusing it for obesity does this hot snack have on our planet, well here’s a few facts from the guys behind Wrapid

• Most hamburger meat about 80% is processed 2 years prior to being served.

• 60% of hamburgers are not beef alone but fillers like soya to wheat to other parts of other animals

• Today there are 1.4 million cows being farmed worldwide for meat, how do we feed them. 30% never see a field but are kept in pens fed on grain, cereals and protein pellets to fatten them faster. All beef cattle get hormones to antibiotics fed them daily to keep them healthy for slaughter.

• If you take the water for crops to grow the feed for cattle plus processing requirements it takes 15,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of hamburger (about 4/5 hamburger patties)

• The flour needed for the buns takes thousands of tonnes or litres of chemicals to kill the insects and “bugs” that harm wheat. Over 10 gallons of diesel are used to produce every 1000 hamburger buns. 40 million are eaten every day in the USA, you do the sums!!

• The cheese used is mostly processed in the fast food brands hamburgers that is, strangely this cheese is mostly vegetable oil, water and chemical food colouring with salts and sugar to help it melt faster and look orange.

• Sesame seeds are added to make the bun look fresher or healthier or freshly baked maybe, no one remembers who first added these or why; but they are grown only in very warm countries like Venezuela, adding cost and food miles to a western consumed burger.

• Pepper used in the recipes also comes from the peppercorn, dried and mostly grown in countries like India.

• Fast Food has changed.

• Now don’t get me started on the packaging for hamburger meals, recycled or not we cut down 27,000 trees a day worldwide just to make toilet paper! But folks we have to eat and there eliminate the waste.

We are not against the hamburger but more vegetables, more sauces and using flatbreads which use less energy, less flour and less cooking time have to help the planet a little. Not using as many cows by creating interesting and varied ingredients inside Wrapid wraps, like real cheese, chilli’s, bok choy, chicken to roasted vegetables to dark meat from a chicken in our Tikka wraps (rarely used these days) has to help the chemical over load found in a hamburger. Add in the spinach or Omega 3 in our wraps and we believe we help just a little bit. Besides the tasting good (what’s the point of boring fast food) we try to do our best to ease the burden on Mother Earth.

A burrito a day keeps the blues away, well at least try one and test this theory yourselves.



Stephen (The Maven and Founder)