Now that I'm no longer a student I'm starting my pretentious quest to become a Waitrose clubcard weilding, organic food munching big issue purchasing cunt. So I started looking into (by which I mean I watched a 1 hour TV program on BBC 3) the quality of the cheap food stuffs I enjoyed as a student.
Some of that stats based on the Food Standards Agency (in Britain, im sure septic tanks and kangaroo rapists will have different standards) are pretty disturbing.
A Beef Burger must contain at least 62% Beef, unless economy is stated in the product name in which case the percentage can be lowered to 47%. However "Beef" in this context is a pretty vague term. The Cheeks (facial sadly) and Heart tend to be among the favoured cuts used for your standard economy burger along with various cuts of fat, connective tissue and sinew. The rest will usually comprise of Bran and Soya flour which will allow the mixture to absorb and hold more water, and the chems.
Hot Dogs are technically 0% Meat, Meat Products. They typically comprise of around 40% MRM; Mechanically Recovered Meat, it was decided some years ago that this stuff is so differing to actual meat that it cant legally be sold as meat. Since Hot Dog as a brand name is Carte Blanche manufacturers have no obligations in terms of what they actually put in so Mechanically Seperated Turkey is a popular choice as it is the cheapest. If you check the packaging of Hotdogs you'll see the "MRM or MSM" stated in the ingredients opposed to actual meat.
Chicken Nuggets and Kievs: Generous firms around the globe target britains low income earners with their goods. EU legislation also greatly helps as it is cheaper to grow battery hens in Brazil, Slaughter Salt and Freeze them before exporting to Holland where they can be defrosted injected with water and then exported on too brtain for processing into a variety of chicken shaped products. Frozen salted meats are taxed at a fairly minute fraction of that of fresh produce.
A Chicken Kiev could legally contain less than 10% chicken as Kiev doesn't legally hold rights to what a Chicken Kiev should contain in the same way that Italy doesnt legally have rights to control what a Pizza should actually contain,
.......After finding all this stuff out, I still enjoy a good spam sandwich spam comming in at over 60% Pork!