Here's a bizaare fact that would make all burger lovers cringe.
Scientists from Clear Labs recently examined 258 burgers and veggie varieties from 79 burger brands and 22 retailers in US, and found out that there are some unwanted ingredients you might have never expected.
Results from the molecular analysis of the food analytics revealed that there are rat and human DNA in hamburger meat in most burgers in the US.
Over all, the study titled, "The Hamburger Report" revealed that 13.6 percent of all products tested were "problematic" because of missing ingredients, and misinformed calorie count.
Among the unhygienic samples, three tested positive for rat DNA. Another sample tested positive for human DNA.
The new food safety test looked at the burger's authenticity, contamination, gluten-content, toxigenic fungi, allergens, etc. through DNA sequencing.
"This report provides new insights into the burger product industry to give suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers a representative overview of the supply chain at large and provides insights based on an objective molecular analysis into how we can strengthen the good and improve the bad," the company wrote on its website.
Despite the finding, Vox.com noted that it is actually not of a big concern and it does not pose threat to human because most of the time, food that we eat really has amounts of DNA from humans, even insects and other animals.
"It means a small piece of human skin, or the hair of a rat, fell into food during production. And this is expected, even condoned, by food safety authorities," the article said.
Here are other relevant findings:
- 1 sample tested positive for human DNA
- 3 samples tested positive for rat DNA
- 46% of samples contained more calories than reported on labels or in menus
- 49% of samples contained more carbohydrates than reported
- In one black bean burger, there were no black beans
- 14 samples have missin gingredients
- 3 samples used substitution of ingredients
- In 2 cases, meat was found in vegetarian products
In an interview with Daily Mail, Clear Labs CEO and co-founder Sasan Amini said, "'In conducting our food category analyses and synthesizing our findings, we're providing the food industry with actionable insights while building out our relational database, the industry's largest collection of reference molecular signatures."