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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"

#261

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

sp332 wrote: post #219
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren’t supposed to eat ground beef rare. Steaks you can. If you don’t know your steak is partially ground beef, that’s the issue.

I think I'm missing what you're worried about. The article says that pink slime can be called "ground beef", not that it can be called steak.

You are skipping over the end effect. If you think you are buying a steak, but are really buying a steak bits + “ground beef” glue, that’s the problem.

IMO, calling it ground beef is very misleading unless you are farmiliar with the processes used.

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

#263

Post by jdietrich »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #225
jdietrich wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nothing in nature produces food by treating in with ammonia! We are the only thing in nature that "produces" food - every other species photosynthesises, hunts or grazes. We're the only species that can cook. Is cooking unnatural? >made only with ingredients or processes endogenous to living organisms without human intervention Where do you draw the line? Is wheat flour "unnatural" because we winnow off the chaff an…

None of your examples involve adding a chemical to the food that does not occur naturally already in food. Most of your examples just involve preparation, which would not make it unnatural.

Cooking. Frying or roasting produce diacetyl, acrylamide and all sorts of other potentially toxic substances that don't naturally occur in the food being cooked.

What about fermentation? The production of cheese or bread produces all sorts of chemicals that don't naturally occur in milk or wheat - are those chemicals "natural"? Does your opinion change if I told you that most monosodium glutamate is produced through industrial fermentation?

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

#265

Post by phonypc »

burfog wrote: post #164
uiri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mostly concerned about the ammonia used during the process. The ammonia is used to kill off germs due to contamination. Maybe we should just throw away contaminated animal by-product.

The intentional mislabeling bothers me most, but yeah I'm not so fond of ammonia. In the human body, ammonia is a lot like alcohol and carbon dioxide: it is a poison that we are well-equipped to remove. Well, sort of. Just as people with lung trouble have problems removing carbon dioxide, people with kidney trouble have problems removing ammonia. What about people with kidney trouble? Perhaps they deserve a warning l…

That's a strange way of thinking about CO2. It's more like water than alcohol, in that it's essential to life.

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

#266

Post by alephx »

brandonmenc wrote: post #47

Pretty sure I saw this quote here a while back: "When indigenous peoples work to make use of all of an animal we call it respect. Do it in a factory and all of the sudden it is gross."

Yes, but then they probably use the trimmings to make cord, other materials, if not feed it to the dogs. Trimmings and their processing sounds disgusting, of dubious nutritional value and untransparent in how it is hidden from customers.

And this is coming from an avid kidney pie and liver taco eater.

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

#267

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

jdietrich wrote: post #263
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of your examples involve adding a chemical to the food that does not occur naturally already in food. Most of your examples just involve preparation, which would not make it unnatural.

Cooking. Frying or roasting produce diacetyl, acrylamide and all sorts of other potentially toxic substances that don't naturally occur in the food being cooked. What about fermentation? The production of cheese or bread produces all sorts of chemicals that don't naturally occur in milk or wheat - are those chemicals "natural"? Does your opinion change if I told you that most monosodium glutamate is produced through…

I'm not against adding chemicals to food. I was just pointing out flaws in the examples.

We should test foods to the best of our ability to make sure they are safe, but I don't think there should be many restrictions otherwise.

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

#268

Post by nabilhat »

deogeo wrote: post #220
jdietrich wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDA have deemed LFTB to be safe. Several other regulators apply restrictions on the use of ammonia in food processing, but deem FTB processed using citric acid to be safe. Do you have evidence that putting beef scraps in a centrifuge to separate meat from fat is dangerous? Do you have evidence to show that the resulting meat is in any way less nutritious or less safe than conventionally recovered meat? We know th…

Because it's tastier and less processed, more natural. How well that correlates with being healthy is another matter, but I really have no idea where you're getting classism. No one thinks "Mmmm, what an expensive piece of meat. I bet the poors can't afford it - I'm buying it!"

I've lived in poverty. Following poverty, I thought your straw man's thought. I'm pretty sure I said it out loud.

While living in poverty, I knew that more expensive meat was better tasting, and better for me. The pink-slime level of meat products I could sometimes afford caused unpleasant GI symptoms which unprocessed meat didn't. I learned to avoid the cheap meat products and experienced intermittent anemia instead. Even the raw ingredients of pink slime, like tendons and cartilage, cost an order of magnitude more than pink slime products, so I went without.

Lack of access to a minimally adequate variety of affordable nutrition is a class problem.

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

#269

Post by GordonS »

sp332 wrote: post #227
adrr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do agree it shouldn’t be called be ground beef?

I wouldn't mind if it were labelled better. But from the consumer point of view, what's the difference? The texture is different and it's been disinfected. Doesn't seem like a huge deal.

> it's been disinfected

Woah... that seems like a huge deal to me

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

#270

Post by GordonS »

open-source-ux wrote: post #178
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.

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…

I don't think the pink slime being discussed here is MRM, in the sense that it's not removed mechanically (even if lots of machinery and processing is used after the fact).

In the UK, I don't think we have the equivalent of this pink slime, or at least I've never heard of it.

Ground beef in the UK is generally labelled as "beef mince" or "steak mince", where "steak mince" is minced beef produced by mincing whole cuts (such as flank), and "beef mince" can also contain minced trimmings, and generally has a higher fat content.

I have no problem buying either of these. Indeed, sometimes you want a higher fat content, such as when making burgers.

Thr pink slime in the article seems to be something inbetween MRM and trimmings, and I would have a problem with buying it.

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