Grant Imahara will help giant improve image with new campaign that takes consumers inside the manufacturing process

Oct 14, 2014 16:47 GMT  ·  By
McDonald’s opens its doors on manufacturing process to show they’re no longer using pink slime in any of their products
   McDonald’s opens its doors on manufacturing process to show they’re no longer using pink slime in any of their products

One of the things that you most often hear about McDonald’s (and other fast food suppliers, but mostly McD’s) is that the “food” they’re serving there shouldn’t qualify as such in real life, being basically leftovers that aren’t fit for human consumption, repackaged to resemble actual food. Admittedly, a lot of chemicals also go into the process.

Pink slime or pink goop, known under the trade name of Lean Finely Textured Beef, is often used in conversations meant to argue that McDonald’s is selling poison under the guise of more or less unhealthy food.

Well, McDonald’s is fighting back. In a new campaign, Our Food. Your Questions, it aims to take current and potential consumers inside the manufacturing process, to show them that what they believe they’re eating is actually what goes into the making of those products.

“Mythbuster” Grant Imahara will help

To give even more credibility to the new ads / videos that will be released online, McD’s has hired none other than Grant Imahara, former star of Discovery’s “Mythbusters.” You can see his first video for the company embedded below, meant to convince you once and for all that there’s no pink slime in their burgers – or any other product, for that matter.

To do that, Imahara goes to one of the factories that make the famous patty that goes into their beef burgers and shows the cameras that it’s 100% beef. No fillers, preservatives, or additives are put in, the beef is simply ground and then smashed into the patty, which is frozen instantly to “lock in the flavors,” we learn.

Obviously, Imahara’s involvement in the new campaign is meant to add extra weight to McDonald’s claims that they would never use anything unhealthy or gross in their products, given his track record with “Mythbusters.”

If he was on that show where he used to debunk widely popular myths, he couldn’t possibly be lying about McD’s. Or, at least, that’s what we’re supposed to believe.

McDonald’s comes clean on pink slime

If that’s not enough to convince you, here’s this from the official website: “[The] ‘pink goop’ image in connection with us is a complete myth. In fact, we don't know where it came from, but it's not in our food. The photo is not a representation of how we create our Chicken McNuggets, or for that matter, any item on our menu.”

This quote is available as answer to the question of whether they’re currently using pink slime in their products. Pink slime is the term used for certain leftovers that are usually used in making pet food, treated with ammonia and sold as meat fit for human consumption, after fillers are added.

McDonald’s says that they used it in all their products between 2004 and 2011, when everyone else was using it too. They stopped doing so in 2011 and never went back.

Embedded below, under the Imahara video, is Chief Brand Manager Kevin Newell explaining to ABC’s Good Morning America how the new campaign isn’t meant to maximize their profit but only to offer consumers more accurate facts about their favorite junk food brand.