Whenever someone is about to show you the dirty secrets behind an industry, they often describe it as showing you “how the sausage is made.”
After all, a lot of people love hot dogs and other types of sausage but that doesn’t make the process that goes into making them any less disgusting. Even if you can get past the fact that they consist of animal parts we otherwise wouldn’t eat, it involves a lot of sights and smells that feel impolite to even describe.
However, that doesn’t stop some people from peeking behind the curtain.
That squeamishness doesn’t necessarily make it easier to resist the allure of someone taking you behind the scenes and showing you the nitty gritty details behind something you might enjoy.
And that’s likely why one Taco Bell employee’s TikTok video has become so widely shared!
When TikTok user @belia_e_hernandez began their video about the process of making Taco Bell’s refried beans, it quickly caught on.
Although their original video doesn’t seem to be on the platform anymore, even a repost by a different Taco Bell employee has racked up 3.8 million views on TikTok alone.
The video begins simply enough with the worker taking out a package of the beans and emptying it into the cubby we see here.
However, as this person gives us a closer look at the product, it’s hard to recognize them as beans at all.
As @belia_e_hernandez explains in a sped-up vocal track that was likely edited to disguise their voice, this is because Taco Bell uses dehydrated beans.
Obviously, the customer would likely notice if the beans were served in that condition.
For that reason the employee fills this gallon jug with about three quarts of particularly hot water and pours it over the beans.
But that’s not the end of the process.
Once the water is added, the surface of the mixture shows a layer of bubbles that resemble what you see in a light bath.
The worker then stirs the beans until all of these bubbles are gone, at which point they should look like the soupy results you see here.
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From there, they only need to wait 45 minutes until the beans look like what we’re used to seeing in Taco Bell products.
With all of the steps revealed, @belia_e_hernandez ended their video by saying nobody can truthfully say “eww” because customers apparently eat Taco Bell bean burritos like there’s no tomorrow.
Nonetheless, “eww” was exactly the reaction many people had when the footage spread to Twitter.
From the looks of it, this person in particular is thinking back on every bean burrito they ever ate.
And the farther the video spread, the more uncomfortable some folks felt.
From the looks of it, this person wants to go back to the days when they were blissfully unaware of this.
In a follow-up tweet , they also started to wonder whether this was the secret behind why Taco Bell doesn’t agree with some people’s digestive systems.
However, this wasn’t necessarily a universal feeling.
Others wondered exactly what people expected to get from a fast food chain.
After all, wouldn’t Taco Bell have mentioned using fresh ingredients by now if they did? It’s kind of an attractive selling point that no marketing department would usually ignore.
Another was simply content to pretend they never saw anything.
And they apparently also learned some disturbing truth behind hot Cheetos that they feel the same way about?
Yeah, it’s hard to blame them. We want to be able to enjoy something before the week is out, right?
Funnily enough, other people seemed to have the opposite reaction and are craving Taco Bell even more now.
In a way, I suppose it makes sense. We know how their food tastes to us and a little insight into how it’s made won’t necessarily change that.
From the looks of it, this was just as common of a sentiment as the discomfort.
As we can see, many of them even recognize that this was the opposite of how they expected to feel, but the heart wants what it wants.
Or the stomach, in this case.
Some people took a more sarcastic approach to their responses.
There were a lot of people who were less than surprised to find out that Taco Bell’s food is not grown in a private garden and sourced each morning. I definitely didn’t think that…not one bit.
Other Taco Bell employees even took to the internet to confirm this video’s legitimacy.
It seems as though a lot of Taco Bell employees have been scarred by this knowledge in the past. And now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we all have!
