RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You know the saying. You don't ever want to know how sausage is made. Despite this sage advice, McDonald's is now sharing the nitty-gritty details of just what is in the Big Mac, the McRib and other iconic meals. Sales have not been great, and there all those rumors about what exactly McDonald's does put in its meat products. So they launched a PR campaign that meant going out onto the streets and asking people to ask them the tough questions. Here are a few of them.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: What part of the chicken is a chicken nugget?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: What's in your chicken nuggets?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: That pink slime - what's up with that?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: What is really in your beef?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: What's in your hamburger?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: Is the beef 100 percent?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: I've read that there's horse meat in your food.
MARTIN: Maureen Morrison, who covers the fast food industry for Ad Age, says it's actually a tactic that's been used before and with some success.
MAUREEN MORRISON: It's just part of a larger trend of a lot of these major food corporations coming out and trying to say, hey, our food really isn't as bad as you all think it is. It's actually using real beef or real chicken which, when you think about it, is kind of funny because I think we all expect to be eating real beef and chicken to begin with.
MARTIN: To address the persistent rumors, McDonald's has called in former "MythBusters" co-host Grant Imahara. And he has questions.
GRANT IMAHARA: Why doesn't the burger rot? Where are the bones in a McRib? Does McDonald's even sell real food? You have questions about McDonald's food. So they've asked me to help you find the answers.
MARTIN: In one video, Imahara visits a Cargill meat processing plant in California where he gets the VIP treatment.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: Hi, Grant. Great to see you again. Welcome to Cargill. We're really excited to tell you all about McDonald's beef today.
IMAHARA: All right. I'm eager to see some meat.
MARTIN: Inside the burger patty factory, Imahara asks a supervisor...
IMAHARA: I got a lot of questions for you.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Outstanding.
IMAHARA: Are there lips and eyeballs in there, Jimmy?
MARTIN: The answer, by the way, is no. It is 100 percent beef trimming, whatever that is. Imahara continues with some good-natured ribbing.
IMAHARA: So you don't pour in any wood pulp or other kinds of meat?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: No wood pulp. Beef in and beef out, nothing else is added.
MARTIN: Unlike Dominoes, which actually admitted its pizza isn't so good after holding some focus groups, Maureen Morrison says McDonald's isn't rethinking its menu or suppliers. It's just pulling back the curtain to try to attract new customers because today people want to know where their food comes from, how it's raised, and how it's processed. That means knowing how the sausage, or rather, the burger, is really made. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.