LEMCO’s central marketing claim, repeated in product advertisements, medical pamphlets, and endorsement materials from 1865 onward. The factual basis for the 34-pounds figure was the approximate ratio of fresh beef to finished extract by mass: roughly 30 to 34 pounds of meat yielded one pound of dried extract. Critics, including Almén, argued the inference was systematically misleading: what was concentrated was the water-soluble fraction of beef, which consists mainly of salts, extractives such as creatine and creatinine, and small organic molecules, not the protein and fat that constitute meat’s genuine nutritive value. The protein and fat remain in the depleted carcass residue after extraction; the buyer receives the discard fraction, not the nutritive fraction, of 34 pounds of beef.

The claim drove the product’s appeal to physicians, hospitals, and consumers caring for invalids: if the extract delivered 34 pounds of beef nutrition per jar, it was both a medical and an economic marvel. LEMCO initially marketed through physicians and apothecaries on exactly this premise. The Lancet published critical analyses in 1865, and Almén estimated that a chemically equivalent mixture of salts could be prepared for approximately 1% of the price. After sustained scientific criticism, LEMCO stopped advertising the extract in medical journals after 1874 and repositioned it as a domestic flavouring and stimulant.