It is estimated that Americans consume approximately 5 billion hamburgers each year—that translates into about
1.2 billion pounds of “meat [1].”
The retail sale of fast food hamburgers is big business.
Most consumers presume that the hamburger they eat is composed primarily of meat.
Previously, the meat content of a series of 8 hotdogs,another fast food meat product, was assessed and the results
presented [2].
Although hot dog package labels listed meat as the first ingredient, this study revealed that more than 50% of
their weight was water and that in most brands, meat (asevidenced by the presence of skeletal muscle tissue)
comprised less than 10% of the cross sectional area of the hot dogs when examined microscopically [2].
The purpose of this study is to use routine morphologicbased techniques that are commonly used in the evaluation of tissue (light microscopy with hematoxylin and eosinstains, special stains, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy) to examine the histologic condition of 8 brands of fast food hamburgers to evaluate their content.