(My comment to another terrific post on Fooducate:)
Fooducate rocks! My question to those that may comment here [Fooducate] that have (ahem) possible industry ties: since when do I need a PhD in chemistry, a lab coat, and an industry funded study to make my kid's lunch?
Common sense is not so common. - Voltaire
Here's an excerpt from the Fooducate Blog:How’s this for taking care of our kids? McDonald’s refuses to put a dubious meat by product into its burgers, but the government orders 7 million pounds of “Pink Slime” for its school lunch program.
The pink slime is a mix of fat trimmings and ammonia-hydroxide that is added to ground beef to fatten it up, and make it cheaper. It’s manufacturer is Beef Products Incorporated (BPI), which claimed in 2010 that its product could be found in 70% of the ground beef in America! From BPI’s web site:
Beef Products, Inc. is the world’s leading producer of lean beef processed from fresh beef trimmings… Our lean beef is an important part of many common foods; from fresh retail ground beef, to foodservice beef patties, hamburgers, cooked meats, and processed luncheon meats to name a few. BPI’s lean beef is a part of nearly 20 billion meals per year, with an unsurpassed food safety record, adding over $250 Million in value to the U.S. beef industry annually… We use a natural compound – called ammonium hydroxide, which is widely used in the processing of numerous foods, such as baked goods, cheeses, gelatins, chocolate, caramels, and puddings – to slightly increase the pH level in beef and improve its safety.
What you need to know:
OK, so these guys figured out a way to take unused scraps of meat and connective tissue and turn it into a profitable business. They should be commended, not chastised right?
WRONG! Turns out these scraps, in the past relegated to pet food, have a high tendency for contamination with e-coli and salmonella. Ammonium Hydroxide – ammonium in water – is an ingredient in many household cleaning products. It kills bacteria. The FDA considers it safe.
So what’s the problem?
Read the entire Fooducate Blog Article here: Pink Slime, Rejected by McDonald's, Goes to School Lunches Instead.
1 comment:
The author of this blog is clearly uninformed and simply regurgitating what she hears (probably from watching Jamie Oliver, who is making his living now off nonprofit government funded healthy food hype - because he couldn't cut it as a food brand the normal way).
The meat is not added to fatten anything. Its added to make the final meat product leaner. It is also not a mix of trimmings and ammonia hydroxide. It is centrifuged trimmings alone, treated briefly at the end stage of processing with heat and chemical to protect against foodborne pathogens. It's a wonder that an ignorant nobody with a computer can destroy the livelihoods of hundreds, raise costs for thousands, and misinform millions, all in the name of the public good - and not be called on it. If you yelled fire in a crowded theater, you'd be in jail. Yell fire on the internet though, and you're beating off to your own press clippings. Congratulations. You're just another moron who got away with it.
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