Soft bun filled with savory ground beef, onions, and melted cheese. Main ingredients: ground beef, cheese, onions, bun.

Beef prices in the U.S. are soaring. The ground stuff is running $6.32 a pound —a nearly 14% jump compared to this time last year. But that's not the only bad news on meat's balance sheet.

Some critics even refer to the top refined vegetable oils as "the hateful eight”. The concern even reached health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has gone so far as to claim Americans are being ...