201–210 of 320 posts
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> Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory. I agree with this take in general. But in labelling a product "ground beef", a consumer would consider the ingredients to be beef that is ground. Separating the meat from the fat in trimmings is good (use more of the meat please!),…
> Separating the meat from the fat in trimmings is good (use more of the meat please!), but the process is not grinding. What does it mean exactly to be ground? When I look at their product, it looks like it's come out of a meat grinder to me. What does that have to do with the process of separating the fat from the meat which is what is in question here?
Not sure what the exact definition would be but I certainly wouldn’t assume it to be ‘ammonia treated slurry flash-frozen on 20ft rollers’. My mind trends toward those old school funnel-top hand-cranked meat grinders when I hear “ground”. Obviously they aren’t hand-cranking the stuff but what I saw on the video on the linked page is far from what I expect when thinking of ground.
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I'm sorry, the languaging in this re-linking sounds like so much like industry shilling. "That product is then sterilized with a strong puff of ammonia gas to kill pathogens, as beef trimmings are especially susceptible to contamination." With an elaborate explanation for each "terrible sounding" detail (what is this "puff" exactly, etc). ... except the sum total of the "terrible sounding" stuff is actually distinctl…
>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…
In which case, what's the problem simply labelling meat that has been through this complex mechanical and chemical process? Let consumers choose from a position of awareness. Allowing it to all be labelled the same as meat that has simply been through a mincer is industry burying it for easier profit.
Thankfully the EU chose to ban these ammonia treated processed products, though industry is working quite hard to find loopholes to sell us a product we won't buy knowingly.
I'm slightly entertained to learn that what the USDA defines as "lean" at 22.5% is higher fat than the cheap higher fat mince (20%) in UK supermarkets. Lean here would normally be 10 or sometimes even 5%.
Fully agree the antibiotic abuse needs to be resolved though.
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.
I think of it more in terms of cheap vs more expensive cuts of meat. I think it's important to signal this on the packaging. In the UK, the process being discussed in this thread is labelled 'mechanically recovered meat' (MRM) on food packaging. For food producers, MRM is much cheaper than other meat which is why you'll often find it used in cheap burgers and ready meals. Many consumers might never look at the ingred…
https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff76960d03e7f57eac3...
I can see why they want the 'low pressure' stuff to be differentiated, but it still needs to be indentified in some way on the ingredients list.
I think the article linked in the posted one does a better job explaining what's "news" about this: https://newfoodeconomy.org/bpi-pink-slime-ground-beef-usda-r... > Since 1994, the government’s stance has been clear. Lean finely textured beef (LFTB) has been a “qualified component” of hamburger, meaning it can be included in ground beef without being independently disclosed. But it could not itself be called ground…
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“Not a diet recommended for general use” can be legitimately said of many defined diets and can DEFINITELY be said of the actual eating habits of most western people. Keto (i.e. any diet that triggers ketones) is a compelling option for numerous reasons, not just epileptics. It’s definitely not a good default for the wider population. And it is of course environmentally and economically inefficient. But ketogenisis i…
'Protein is more filling' is also a part of our biochemistry but I'd still be ok with carnivore diet being called a fad diet
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keto a fad diet? It's been around since the 1920s...
For treating epileptics yes, not as a diet recommended for general use. https://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epileps...
it's absolutely a diet that can work for anybody, it does require a fair amount of reading though.
PSA: your grocery store butcher will grind up a steak of your choosing for you at no cost, you only need to ask. I didn't know people bought pre-ground beef until moving out of my parents' home. Growing up, whenever we went shopping, my mother would start at the meat department, pick out a cheap steak, and ask the butcher to grind it up. We'd return for it later before heading to the cashier. I thought this was the s…
no, you just have parents that care about food.
I can't speak for the US, so maybe it is different, but here in the UK even the cheapest steak will set you back far more per kilo than minced beef.
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>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…
It's not honestly lean beef. If it were, it would be red. It's connective tissue, with a bit of lean beef mixed in. This has a different nutritional profile. There is less iron, and the amino acid proportions are different. We could call it "pureed tendons, ligaments, defatted fat tissue, cartilage, lean beef, and ammonia or citric acid". That is a long and unwieldy name. The common name, known to consumers, is pink…
So rather than give it a name which is deliberately off-putting it's probably better to give it something vaguely neutral and otherwise let it stand on its own merits, whatever they may be.