I don't care. And you know why? I'M VEGAN.
You cared enough to post about it.
What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
311–320 of 320 posts
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Again, that is not true. They are not cognitive tissues but beef. You could call it Processed Beef if you want, but it doesn't have a vastly different nutritional profile.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's what this is. In fact, the particular product in question is leaner than ground beef, and added to ground beef to get it qualified as "lean". If it's not in the posted article, it's in the linked article (which I cited in my original comment).
As I said, A lot of the time the stuff is centrifuged to remove fat, in which case it’s used as filler. It’s the same product, it’s just processed more, but it’s taken off the carcass the same way, and you still get to enjoy that lovely spinal cord. Colloquially the full fat product is “white slime” and the centrifuged and ammoniated product is “pink slime”.
It is not the same product. The product you mentioned are used in different areas for different purpose.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Mostly agreed... To me, it's not so dissimilar to the processing of a lot of other foods... segmenting citrus for pre-pealed/canned versions or handling/processing of cashews or even how black olives are express-ripened beyond nature.
While, personally, I feel that lean meats are wholly unnatural and fattier cuts/grounds should be preferred, I'm not sure there's a lot to get worked up about. The low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-salt diet trends are probably the single worst trends to happen to american health. The issues around antibiotics are also huge.
For the most part, people are far better off avoiding refined sugars, grains and refined vegetable oils. If most people did that, without any other measures taken, things would be a lot better. Not eating processed meat in general not withstanding.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's a fine sell. Now sell me on, "this is so OK that we should have a statutory right not to ever mention this fact. 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. Over-labelling is just as problematic as under-labelling, as we have seen with Prop 65; adding more words to a l…
Which is ok, but when grinding is not involved calling something ground is directly misleading. If I sell a taco and never mention what it’s made of then sure. It’s only when I sell taco and say this is made from beef but actually mostly contains soy that people are going to get upset. Similarly, if I say ground beef, I would expect actual grinding to be involved not some other process.
Great example with the taco... considering what taco bell and jack in the box make their tacos out of.
I also once ordered from a "Burger" place via grubhub... I'm fairly certain what I got was not beef, but some veggie burger as a social experiment. The rating of the site on grubhub was pretty low after about a month though.
It's pretty easy to deceive while staying within the bounds of legal. In the end, I'd rather the mechanically separated beef over being tricked into soy. I'm allergic to legumes. Not as bad as some people I know with deadly soy allergies, but enough that I notice. For a very long time, before diagnosed, I just got used to throwing up a bit a few times a day after eating.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#316I use trimmings from deer and elk meat that I harvest and butcher myself and grind into ground meat. Only difference is those animals are much leaner with little fat and I don’t use a centrifuge with ammonia. If you like burgers and such, I highly recommend grinding your own chuck or nicer cuts of beef.
This isn’t just ground chuck. That’s the whole point.
No, ground chuck != ground beef. I do wish it was common to buy actual ground chuck though.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That process happens in the liver and the older you are the slower the urea cycle. Not exactly. As I said earlier, renal function degrades slowly in old age. But that has no bearing on the pink slime issue, because normal nitrogen clearance capacity is orders of magnitude greater than dietary ammonia consumption, even in the elderly. > While an athlete may be able to handle additional pink meat I would question why…
You are making the case that eating pink slime and consuming ammonia is safe and a welcome thing because the FDA doesn't test for ammonia in food. You are also saying that our ability to detoxify doesn't change with age or fitness level. Each message you try to put down the other person to change the discussion into a personality based discussion. Personal attacks are a sign of weakness in your position. Using person…
I'm sorry, I really don't mean to put you down. I'm pointing out that the things you're saying make absolutely no sense. You seem to have no idea what you're talking about, and you seem to have no desire to learn more. Honestly, I feel like I'm talking to a child. Or a bot.
Try reading this out loud, see if it helps: every human body is an ammonia factory, and easily handles thousands of times more ammonia than what is present in foods. The amounts of ammonia found in foods is completely insignificant compared to the ammonia your body naturally produces. If you have a condition that impairs your ability to excrete nitrogen, the only way to lower your blood ammonia level (and urea) is to EAT LESS PROTEIN. Avoiding ammonia has no significant effect. Read all that again to help get it into your brain. And if you don't believe me, just look it up. This isn't difficult stuff; it's basic, basic physiology.
Just for fun, and at the risk of repeating myself:
> You are making the case that eating pink slime and consuming ammonia is safe and a welcome thing because the FDA doesn't test for ammonia in food.
No, not because the FDA says so. Rather, I've explained some basic physiology to you, and provided numbers showing that dietary ammonia has an insignificant effect on the human body. Your body produces hundreds or thousands of times more ammonia than you eat from scary pink slime, every day. You don't have to take my word for it. Go read about it. You'll probably enjoy it.
> You are also saying that our ability to detoxify doesn't change with age or fitness level.
That's half correct. Renal function declines very slowly after middle age in healthy people. I've seen no evidence that hepatic urea production declines with age, nor have I seen evidence that fitness level affects nitrogen conversion or clearance. If you have any evidence to support your opinions, I'd love to see it.
> You are arguing that ammonia in food at any level is okay and wouldn't put additional stress on the detoxification process because the fda doesn't test for this?
No, see my answer above. Or just re-read my earlier comments. The FDA's testing is incidental.
> That position while technically correct doesn't take into account all of the other stresses including age as factors that slow down these processes.
No, age is accounted for investigations of this stuff, because age is part of the standard formula for eGFR, which is a measure of renal efficiency. But that doesn't matter, because if there are any "factors" that impair your ability to excrete nitrogen, then the only thing that will help is to lower your protein consumption, which is where the vast majority of the nitrogen comes from. Any ammonia in food will not have a significant effect.
> What do you think would happen if you went on a 30 day pink meat challenge?
You mean pink slime? Well, try running the numbers! I've given you all the information you need to find the data and work with it, but I'll make it super easy for you. Let's use these assumptions:
1. Let's say you eat a big 10 ounce patty of pink slime every day.
2. Let's say that pink slime contains 400 ppm ammonia, which is at the high end of tested values.
3. Let's use a dietary nitrogen content conversion factor of 16%, which is the standard for meat protein. If you need more info, go read about "Jones factors". It's easy stuff!
Now, you'll need to figure out both the total ammonia content and the total protein content of your pink slime. The ammonia is easy, given assumption 2 above. You can look up the protein content on the internet. Here's a hint: the USDA categorizes pink slime as 18/15 lean ground beef, so you can use the nutrition data for that product in any of the USDA databases.
Convert the ammonia and the protein to equivalent nitrogen content. Use the standard 16% jones factor for the protein.
Now, you'll be able to tell me how much extra ammonia you'd get from the pink slime, versus, for example, a serving of "normal" ground beef with half as much ammonia. Give it a try.
And then, when you have thah number, reflect once again on the fact that it doesn't matter. If you need to lower the ammonia (or urea, more likely) in your blood, eating ground beef instead of pink slime will do you no good. Even if you're old and sick, the ammonia you make from ALL of the protein you eat completely overwhelms all other sources.
Seriously, give those numbers a try. Let me know how it goes.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be very surprised at someone knowing that beef doesn't need to be cooked internally to as high a temperature _without_ knowing that this isn't true of ground beef. I'm not much of a cook, and have even less exposure to Western cooking, and that's one of the basics you come across when you first started handling meat.
Yes, I agree it’s common knowledge that steak and burger have different cooking requirements. The issue is if you THINK you have a nice solid real steak with clean insides, but ACTUALLY have a few steak pieces glued together with ground meat purée. You can’t tell by looking at it. Probably doesn’t taste any different. And the customer is never informed.
I might have misunderstood what we were talking about here: I thought the context was ground beef. I agree that I probably wouldn't assume that my steak wasn't reconstituted.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the argument is more that consumers have a very specific idea about what constitutes ground beef: a few specific cuts of beef put through a meat grinder. Full stop. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using the whole cow so to speak -- people love chicken nuggets and hot dogs -- but you should at least be upfront about the difference. If I tried to pass off a tub of 'pink slime' as ground beef in a kitchen…
But the key is that the same cuts are used for this product. They're just separated from the fat more efficiently. It's not a different cut, it's just recovered in a different way. They could then choose to grind it afterward or not, but either way that is something which just affects the final shape/texture of the product and I don't think the mechanics of how it is shaped is what is really bothering people about BP…
It’s not simply recovered in a different way. Send a several pounds to a lab and the difference is easy to detect.
You can argue that said difference is meaningless, but that’s what markets are there to decide and misleading labels rob markets of pricing power by hiding information from consumers.
IMO, it really comes down to planned economics vs free markets. Producers hate free markets as a rule, but avoiding them has real costs.
Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn’t just ground chuck. That’s the whole point.
No, ground chuck != ground beef. I do wish it was common to buy actual ground chuck though.
How is ground chuck not ground beef? Chuck is a cut. You can also get it cubed - it makes great stew meat.