Is it live or is it Memorex?

Perhaps many of my readers won’t recall the above phrase since Memorex cassettes tapes have gone the way of the covered wagon but I can still remember this commercial. The point was that a recording of an opera singer when recorded on a Memorex tape would shatter a glass just like in a live situation.

Today, however, my blog is more about how artificial two things are compared to the real or live product. Today we are dissecting the McDonalds’ McRib Sandwich and the Whisker Lickin’s Tender Moments Moist Salmon Flavored Cat Treats.

Yesterday, one of the online news sites posted the ingredients of the McRib Sandwich at McDonalds. Now I know that most things that McDonalds serves are highly processed and probably don’t contain much in the way of nutrition but I will admit to craving a Big Mac now and then! I never liked the McRib when it was a regular menu item, which is probably why it only makes “guest” appearances every now and then. The only person that I knew that enjoyed it was my Mom and since we didn’t live in a town that had a McDonalds, she’d have to wait until we went into the big city to satisfy her craving. SO the story yesterday was that the McRib Sandwich was made out of 70 ingredients, 34 of which are found in the bun alone, including azodicarbonamide. Besides being a great scrabble word, this ingredient is also found in yoga mats or tennis shoes and that’s just part of the bun! Although it does contain pork, it is really the less expensive innards and castoffs from the pig that are molded into a rib-shaped patty and smothered with BBQ sauce. Since I’ve seen the video of how they mold their chicken McNuggets, I’m not sure I want to go into details of getting the pork by-products and other ingredients to form a patty. Add pickles, onions, 980 mg of sodium, 10 g of fat and you’ve got your McRib Sandwich-And we haven’t even made it yet to the fries and Diet Coke!

Now, on the other side of things, I usually buy some treats for the farm cats that roam my “office”. (I work out of my boss’s home). Anyway, I never had a cat as a pet, except when I was 7 and I took one for a ride on a rocking horse-not a pretty ending, so I’m not well-versed in what cats like as treats. In addition, these cats are free roaming and are use to catching their own meals. Their owners do feed them regularly but I have seen them with a few unlucky critters between their teeth! The last treat I bought was called “Purina Whisker Lickin’s Tender Moments Moist Salmon Flavored Cat Treats”. I guess I should have been tipped off by the wording “salmon-flavored”. Anyway, my favorite cat, Duffy, who comes in my office specifically for treats totally turned her nose up at the salmon figure I, was trying to feed her. Although it looked and felt a bit like an eraser to me, I thought for sure the cat would go for it. I did feel relieved when her owner said that she doesn’t like salmon flavored anything! Great, there are 6 more cats that I can make friends with. However, I tried coaxing O’Malley, the big tom cat, into taking a bite and he again turned up his nose. The morsels really do remind me of an eraser! So, after the McRib fiasco, I decided to check the ingredients of these cat treats and low and behold, the first ingredient is LIVER! Then wheat flour, corn gluten meal, chicken by-product meal, water, beef tallow preserved with BHA, glycerin, SALMON, and then about 30 more chemicals-none of which look too appetizing! So, needless to say, the cats are just not into all the molded, processed, fake tasting salmon treats! They’ll just stick to crunchy things both real and from a bag! As for me, I don’t even want to read the ingredients on the hot dog package!