(I got this exact same pic on a t-shirt!!!=D ) hey everyone, check out this disgusting story I happened to see sometime last week, and I'm just now getting around to putting it on here, cause I finally rememebered it....this made me so sad, considering how we don't have Mexican food here at all hardly, just like 2 restaurants, half an hour, and the other one is nearly an hour away...the Taco Bell here was only 10 minutes from where I live....Uggghhhhh as many things as I can't stand, I never thought I would be saying that Mexican would be one of them depending on how it is made...sorry but I am not ingesting SAND of all things...that is just sick...I never knew this either, and I"m sure a good part of the world still doesn't...the ones who never read anything ever and just go along like everything is fine and dandy...Guess some people just don't care and want to keep on eating SAND...I never had this pizza, toooo many ingredients for me to have guessed at or picked off, I would've still been there until midnight fussing with that thing, but I did have the chicken before......=pthat just grossed me out, I'd rather have things with only ONE ingredient and I don't have to worry...my fruit and water where I"m not sitting there guessing what's in it, or picking everything apart for 30 minutes wondering what's in it....I think I'm just as bad as a kid sometimes with these picky eating habits that won't seem to leave me...this just made my skin crawl and my stomach turn when I read it...Never again for me ever ever....=p What's Really In … TACO BELL MEXICAN PIZZA http://njuice.com/Vo1sN-Truth-About-Your-Food

It's Italian, it's Mexican, it's ... well, it's got a whopping 64 different ingredients, so it's hard to tell just what exactly it is. On the face of it, this meal doesn't look too bad. There are two pizza shells, ground beef, beans, pizza sauce, tomatoes, and three cheeses. Nothing alarming, right? Even the nutritional vital signs, while high, compare favorably to most fast-food pizzas. It only gets scary when you zoom in on what it takes to stitch those pieces together. That's when you see all of those 64 smaller ingredients, including an astounding 24 in the ground beef alone. Yikes.

Now, some of those ingredients amount to little more than Mexican seasonings and spices, but there are also loads of complex compounds such as autolyzed yeast extract, maltodextrin, xanthan gum, calcium propionate, fumaric acid, and silicon dioxide. Any of those sound familiar? That last one might—if you've spent any time at the beach. But chances are you normally refer to it by its common name: sand.

That's right, sand is made from fragmented granules of rock and mineral, and the most common of them is silicon dioxide, or silica. This is also the stuff that helps strengthen concrete and—when heated to extreme temperatures—that hardens to create glass bottles and windowpanes.

So why exactly does Taco Bell put sand in the Mexican Pizza? To make it taste like spring break in Cancun? Not quite. As it turns out, Taco Bell adds silica to the beef to prevent it from clumping together during shipping and processing. The restaurant uses the same anti-caking strategy with the chicken, shrimp, and rice.

Is it unusual to add silica to food? Yes. Is it dangerous? Probably not. The mineral actually occurs naturally in all sorts of foods like vegetables and milk.

Even so, you can save hundreds of calories if you just make your pizza at home, with this simple recipe from our latest book, Cook This, Not That! Kitchen Survival Guide. ******* WOW, I didn't know this either!!! I'm not going to be left with anything considering how disgusting everything really is once you pick it apart...never again for me on this one either!!! anything!!!!! that about makes me want to throw up knowing they put plant fertilizer in that stuff...does anyone know what plant fertilizer REALLY is!?!?!?!! I gotta stop thinking about this stuff and find something else to do before I actually DO throw up....=p

What's Really In … SUBWAY 9-GRAIN WHEAT

Okay, so you're probably not in the habit of ordering a la carte bread loaves at Subway, but there’s a good chance you've eaten at least a few sandwiches built on this bread. The good news is that Subway actually delivers on the nine-grain promise. The bad news: Eight of those nine grains appear in miniscule amounts. If you look at a Subway ingredient statement, you'll find every grain except wheat listed at the bottom of the list, just beneath the qualifier "contains 2% or less." In fact, the primary ingredient in this bread is plain old white flour, and high-fructose corn syrup plays a more prominent role than any single whole grain. Essentially this is a white-wheat hybrid with trace amounts of other whole grains like oats, barley, and rye.

So outside of the nine grains, how many ingredients does Subway use to keep this bread together? Sixteen, including such far-from-simple ingredients as DATEM, sodium steroyl lactylate, calcium sulfate, and azodiacarbonamide. But here's one that's a little unnerving: ammonium sulfate. This compound is loaded with nitrogen, which is why it's most common use is as fertilizer. You might have used it to nourish your plants at home. And Subway does the same thing; the ammonium sulfate nourishes the yeast and helps the bread turn brown. What, did you think that dark hue was the result of whole grains? Hardly. It's a combination of the ammonium sulfate and the caramel coloring. Seems like Jarod might frown on that sort of subterfuge.