1. Beef. It's Everywhere.
If you stopped eating red meat during the big cholesterol scare of the '90s -- or because you saw what happens to those cows -- you probably rejoiced when fast-food chains jumped on the chicken bandwagon (possibly because you haven't seen what happens to those chickens). Grilled chicken sandwiches and salads are now pretty standard on fast-food menus, but there's a small catch: They might contain beef.
At least to American taste buds, "beefy" often equals "yummy." Thus the omnipresence of the ingredient. Just a few surprising areas where you'll find beef -- typically in "extract" or "essence" form -- include McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, Wendy's Grilled Chicken Sandwich and KFC's Grilled Chicken Sandwich [sources: Schlosser, Krumboltz].
It also used to be in McDonald's french fries, which proved to be an expensive secret ingredient. McDonald's paid $10 million in 2002 to settle an array of lawsuits filed by Hindus (for whom cows are sacred) and vegetarians who'd been eating the so-called "vegetarian" menu item [source: Grace].
