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What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

newfoodeconomy.org

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Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#191

Post by paganel »

scotty79 wrote: post #182
paganel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really shocking to me, and I’ve eaten lots and lots of meat (including beef) from animals raised and then killed by my close relatives. It’s only that my grand-parents weren’t using a centrifugal thingie to get the most out of the cow they had just sacrificed, and ammonium hydroxide might have been from an alien planet to them. The way we industrially process meat is shocking, yes.

> It’s only that my grand-parents weren’t using a centrifugal thingie Did our other close relatives use the centrifugal thingie while processing the meat from animals they raised and killed?

Wanted to not repeat the same word in two consecutive phrases, hence my not-perfect choice of words, but to answer your question: no, afaik all the relatives that I know who had killed their meat didn’t use any industrial-like tools to process it.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#192

Post by jacobolus »

cwyers wrote: post #100
tptacek wrote: post #3

Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.

This is why I haaaaaaaaate the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwL5G5HbGA Except for the part where the kids totally no sell his smug act and he just stands there dumbstruck. Those chicken trimmings are... chicken. Human history is the history of us figuring out how to extract more edible bits from the animal than our jaws can along (that's how we got soup, among a lot of other thi…

LOL. Nice work kids. Where does that guy think soup stock, sausages, etc. come from?

In any event, according to web sleuthing typical chicken patties/nuggets are not made from mechanically separated chicken, which instead mostly goes into bologna, hot dogs, and the like.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#193

Post by nate_meurer »

an_opabinia wrote: post #184
parasubvert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you're talking about, and have the audacity to refer to the parent poster as shit examples? Your response is a disgrace to HN posting standards. How isn't this science of cooking? Ammonia was a primary leavening agent for baked goods for centuries. Baking soda mostly replaced it but some old recipes still call for it. It's also commonly found in cheeses like Brie. It's in abundance in some fish…

> Ammonia was a primary leavening agent for baked goods for centuries. Listen, I obviously didn't know that ammonia bicarbonate was used as a leavening agent for centuries, or that it was made from deer horns, or whatever. :) Obviously, I also imagined that when a news article says they use ammonia on the beef, they mean ammonia gas (NH3). I don't fault anyone for thinking that either, like gentle John Oliver. Isn't…

> Again, I don't know if they're using ammonia gas on the beef trimmings, but assuming that they are, then you've managed to conflate two different chemicals

No, they are the same chemical for the purposes of this discussion. Any form of ammonia you eat -- whether ammonium bicarbonate or ammonium sulfate in bread, or ammonia residues in meat -- will be found as ammonium hydroxide in your blood. It's the same stuff. And the consequences of that extra ammonia in your body are precisely nothing. A ten ounce serving of pure pink slime (you know you want it) might give you a whopping hundred milligram boost of ammonia. That's 10 to 20 times less ammonia (nitrogen equivalent) than a typical adult pisses out every day.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#194

Post by [deleted] »

paganel wrote: post #191
scotty79 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s only that my grand-parents weren’t using a centrifugal thingie Did our other close relatives use the centrifugal thingie while processing the meat from animals they raised and killed?

Wanted to not repeat the same word in two consecutive phrases, hence my not-perfect choice of words, but to answer your question: no, afaik all the relatives that I know who had killed their meat didn’t use any industrial-like tools to process it.

[deleted]

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#195

Post by dawnerd »

cwyers wrote: post #100
tptacek wrote: post #3

Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.

This is why I haaaaaaaaate the Jamie Oliver chicken nuggets video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwL5G5HbGA Except for the part where the kids totally no sell his smug act and he just stands there dumbstruck. Those chicken trimmings are... chicken. Human history is the history of us figuring out how to extract more edible bits from the animal than our jaws can along (that's how we got soup, among a lot of other thi…

Find it kind of funny too that some of the same people that find pink slime, chicken nuggets disgusting are the same people that will suck meat off ribs and eat the bone marrow like its butter.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#196

Post by dawnerd »

Pharmakon wrote: post #26
jeffdavis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the bad consequences of this "pink slime"? Is it worse for you than a ribeye steak? What makes it not OK?

It is much higher in fat, and much lower in protein than meat. It also contains pulverized bone, nerve tissue and more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat This puree includes bone, bone marrow, skin, nerves, blood vessels, and the scraps of meat remaining on the bones. The resulting product is a blend primarily consisting of tissues not generally considered meat along with a much smaller amou…

That's a totally different product than pink slime. Your first statement alone is incorrect.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#197

Post by mohaba »

behringer wrote: post #141
jdietrich wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Basically, pink slime is highly processed leavings of beef that cannot be used except by putting it through more or less a blender and a chemistry lab. After butchering a carcass, you're left with a lot of fatty trimmings with small amounts of meat attached that are uneconomical to recover by hand. If you gently heat the fat trimmings and spin them in a centrifuge, you cleanly separate the lean meat from the fat. Th…

So if I want to eat nice meat cuts ground up, without getting slime, what do I do?

You want ground ${Specific-cut-name}

ground sirloin

ground chuck

ground round

etc.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#198

Post by noio »

jdietrich wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #3

Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.

>Why is this supposed to upset me? The factor that dominates our conversations about food - social class. We have a set of reflexive attitudes about food that are largely uncorrelated with health, nutrition or the environment, but are strongly correlated with the social class of who eats what. Advanced meat recovery is the ultimate in nose-to-tail eating, allowing us to make use of almost every gram of edible meat on…

I just wanted to say I've found your comments throughout this thread to be valuable and thoughtful. Reminds me why it's worth my time reading HN every now and then.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#199

Post by nate_meurer »

wolco wrote: post #167
cc439 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every foodstuff will be exposed to bleach and or ammonia due to the washdown procedure in every food processing plant. It may not be present in the same quantities as a product directly treated by such disinfectants but it's still there.

No not at all. A handful of companies in a few products use ammonia. Cheese, chocolate and baked goods. For baked goods they claim it evaporates. Cheap cheeses use it to speed up growth. Some foods breakdown into ammonia so our bodies can handle it but constant higher levels can cause illness as it overwhelms the body.

Some foods? You mean, like, literally all digestible proteins?

> but constant higher levels can cause illness as it overwhelms the body.

Note that this has nothing to do with the tiny residual levels of ammonia in bread, cheese (both cheap and expensive), and meat products of all kinds. Your body produces and excretes an order of magnitude more ammonia than what you eat directly from food, and will easily do far more than that if you're athletic or eat a lot of extra protein.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#200

Post by DrScump »

Pharmakon wrote: post #26
jeffdavis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the bad consequences of this "pink slime"? Is it worse for you than a ribeye steak? What makes it not OK?

It is much higher in fat, and much lower in protein than meat. It also contains pulverized bone, nerve tissue and more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat This puree includes bone, bone marrow, skin, nerves, blood vessels, and the scraps of meat remaining on the bones. The resulting product is a blend primarily consisting of tissues not generally considered meat along with a much smaller amou…

Read the article you linked more carefully. MSM from cattle cannot be sold for human consumption in the UK or US.
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