No. It is not true. Taco Bell uses beef. However, their beans do not have lard in them, so bean tacos are fine for vegetarians.

OMG, I use to love the bean tacos when I first went veggie but the amount of confusion I caused the workers was hilarious.

oh man, they get SO MAD when you correct them. it's funnnnny.

Good thing. I love to get frito burritos with beans instead of the chili mix. I also like the seven-layer burrito and bean tostadas. Taco Bell has always been a good place for quick (if unhealthy) vegetarian-friendly food when I'm on the go... I was just wondering if it was possible that I'd have more of an option there. I'm glad I checked with the intelligent members of vegetarian first, though!

I heard the sour cream is not veg. :/

Not technically. It contains a small amount of gelatin. If you don't eat gelatin, you can order seven-layer burritos sans the sour cream.

I've never heard that. I had heard that Jack in the Box tacos were vegetarian, but never about Taco Bell.

I wonder if there is any truth to the Jack-in-the-Box rumor?

Nope, the Beef Tacos actually contain beef, and use soy as a filler. (Scroll down to "Beef Regular Taco or Beef Monster Taco.")

It's meat. Their sour cream has gelatin in it too. The beans are vegetarian, as is the rice.

(my mother works at a Taco Bell)

Interesting, as my sister used to work at TB and said the sour cream was safe...

Maybe she didn't know that gelatin wasn't vegetarian-friendly.

No, seeing as she was a vegetarian and had grown up in a family of vegetarians.

Ah, okay. I guess it's possible that she skipped over the gelatin ingredient because I have seen official correspondence from TB that claims they use gelatin in the sour cream.

No. It's not like she only looked at the ingredients once. I think it's more possible that 1) they didn't use it at the time or 2) her location didn't use sour cream with gelatin.

Definitely a possibility. Some states require different standards on different food items. Also, if it was in Hawaii or Canada, I think things are really different there.

Really?

Yes, they have different standards.

I worked at Taco Bell a few years back... the meat has soy protein added, but it's beef all right.

You could always call 1-800-TACO BELL. But from what I remember on the allergy chart we had at work, the beef contained beef, soy protein, tomato sauce, oatmeal and some spices and preservatives. I live in Canada so maybe it's different?

Maybe she was just confused by the "soy protein" ingredient. I seem to remember it saying on the box "Contains 25% soy protein" or something similar.

I don't know about the rice being vegetarian.. we used to mix either butter or shortening with it.. I'm not sure which.

This is what I've heard also. It's a filler. Makes it cheaper for their purchasing but they can still charge more because it's meat.

A lot of places are doing this now, I've noticed soy filler in anything that is ground meat, sausages, etc.

I actually heard the opposite. A friend of mine who used to work for Taco Bell said that they had to pull the veins out of the beef, or something like that. That image has alwyas stuck in my mind. . .

I know that it's definately not only soy. I have never read the ingredients (although it seems weird that it isn't on the website they usually have ingredients) it's probably mainly meat.

I had "vegetarian" friends in high school years ago that claimed jack in the box tacos were "soy" years later I read the ingredients online and the first (and most) ingredient is beef fat or something.

Don't trust fast food because even if it was a lot of soy there's no way it would be completely veg. It'll always have fat or something to flavor it.

PS your icon looks like Ron Weasley.

It's definitely Ron.

My friend's father works at the Pentagon and he did a report on the meat used by Taco Bell. At the time of the report they used Grade B beef. I'm sure they've upgraded to A after the Pentagon saught them out, but yeah. Definitely real beef.

How disappointing! Thanks for the info.

taco bell is my fast food of choice, thanks to the yum bean burrito (and my addiction to mexican food.)