What's Actually In Our Meat Sticks (And What's Not)
15 grams of protein. Zero grams of sugar. No mechanically separated meat, no artificial fillers, no shortcuts. Here's exactly what goes into a McBee High Protein Meat Stick — and why it's different from anything else on the shelf.
I'm going to tell you exactly what's in our meat sticks. Every ingredient. Every process step. And I'm going to tell you what's in the other guys' sticks too — because once you see the difference, you can't unsee it.
Let's Start With What Most Snack Sticks Are Made Of
Grab a stick off a gas station rack or a big-box store shelf. Flip it over. You'll see a list that starts with "mechanically separated chicken" or "meat sludge" — which is exactly what it sounds like. The bones, fat, and scraps left over after the good cuts are removed get blasted through a sieve at high pressure until you get a paste. That paste gets formed into a stick.
Then they add artificial flavoring, a ton of sugar, MSG, fillers, and preservatives to make that paste taste like something worth eating. The result is soft, mushy, and falls apart when you bite it.
That is not a meat stick. That's processed food in the shape of one.
What McBee Uses Instead
We start with whole-muscle cuts of beef and pork — the same types of cuts you'd use for roasts and steaks. We grind them fresh in-house for every single batch. No tubes of pre-ground mystery meat. No mechanical separation. Real cuts, ground fresh, every time.
Our sticks are 75% beef, 25% pork — both from whole-muscle cuts, ground to 85% lean. That ratio creates the ideal texture: firm, dense, and with the snap you expect from a premium stick.
Why 75/25 Beef and Pork?
People ask why we use pork at all. Fair question. Here's the honest answer.
A 100% beef stick at the right fat ratio tends to dry out unevenly during the cook process and can get crumbly. The pork fat content in our 75/25 blend gives the stick the moisture retention and binding it needs to hold up through our slow-cook process — and to sit on a shelf for 12 months without losing texture or flavor.
That's not a shortcut. That's the recipe we dialed in to get the best stick possible. We tried a lot of variations. This is the one that held up.
"We're not hiding the pork. It's part of the recipe. And it's the reason our stick has that snap and density that the cheap ones don't."
The Process That Sets Us Apart
The meat is just the start. How you make the stick matters just as much.
Whole-Muscle Grind, Fresh Every Batch
We don't buy pre-ground meat. We start with whole-muscle beef and pork cuts and grind them fresh in our own SQF Certified, USDA Inspected facility in Lamoni, Iowa. Every batch starts from scratch.
Vacuum Mixing — 40% Better Spice Blend
Most facilities use a conventional mixer that tumbles the meat and spices together. We use a vacuum-powered mixer that pulls the air out of the chamber while mixing. That vacuum draws the spices directly into the meat fibers — resulting in a 40% better blend rate than conventional equipment. Every bite tastes exactly the same as the last one.
Slow Heat Ramp Cook Process
Most commercial smokehouses blast the sticks at a constant high temperature until they hit the required internal temp. We do it differently. We slowly ramp the heat up over time through a series of cook and smoke cycles — essentially babying the meat to temperature. The result is better texture, better moisture retention, and a flavor that doesn't get burned off by high-heat shortcuts.
Small Batch. Every Time.
We don't run mass-production volumes. We run small batches with custom recipes. That means we can catch problems, adjust, and hold a quality standard that a 100,000-unit-per-day facility never could. Quality over volume — that's the only way we know how to operate.
What's In It. What's Not.
That's per 1.5 oz stick. One of the highest protein-per-ounce ratios you'll find in a meat snack on the market. Real protein from real meat — not from added isolates or fillers.
Most snack sticks are loaded with sugar to mask the flavor of low-quality meat. We use real ingredients — spices, real cheeses, real fruit in certain flavors — so the sugar isn't necessary.
No synthetic preservatives. We preserve the shelf life of our product through our cooking and smoking process — the way it's been done for generations — not through a chemical shortcut.
Clean ingredient list. No fillers, no artificial flavoring, no MSG. Real ingredients you can actually read. Added beef collagen for texture — that's it.
The Flavors — All 15 of Them
We started with six core flavors. We now have fifteen, and every one of them uses real ingredients — real jalapeños, real cheese, real fruit, real honey. No artificial flavor packets. Here are our six flagship flavors you'll see on shelves and online:
Core Flavors
Cowboy Classic — The original. Salt, pepper, garlic, and smoke. Everything a meat stick should be and nothing it shouldn't.
Jalapeño Cheese — Real jalapeños and real cheese blended into the meat. One of our best sellers for a reason.
Buffalo Style — Real buffalo sauce, not a powder approximation. Tangy, spicy, and seriously good.
Honey BBQ — Real honey, real barbecue flavors. A hint of sweet without any added sugar in the stick itself.
Peppered — Black pepper forward, bold and clean. For people who want the meat to do the talking.
Teriyaki — Real ginger, real garlic, real pineapple. One of our more surprising flavors — hits different than anything you've had in a stick.
We also make Cranberry Bacon, Chili Cheese, Nashville Hot, Maple Breakfast Sausage, Cinnamon Apple, Zesty Garlic, Jalapeño Cranberry, Hot Honey, and Chili Lime. Every single one made the same way — whole-muscle meat, all-natural ingredients, small-batch process.
Made on Our Farm. From Our Cattle.
Here's the part most snack brands can't say. We own the entire supply chain.
The cattle are raised on our land in Missouri. The beef goes to our own SQF Certified, USDA Inspected processing facility in Lamoni, Iowa — McBee Meat Company. We make the sticks there. We package them there. We ship them from there. No middleman, no co-manufacturer, no third-party facility we're renting time at.
That's why we can tell you exactly what's in the stick. Because we made every part of it.
You've probably seen us on The McBee Dynasty on Bravo and Peacock — that's the same family, the same farm, the same operation you're buying from when you order these sticks. There's no separation between the show and what we actually do every day. That's real life.
We're not a food startup that found a co-packer and slapped a label on someone else's recipe. We're ranchers who built a meat company from the ground up — because we believed we could make something better than what was on the shelf. And we did.
— Steven McBee, McBee Farm & Cattle Co.
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