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[Lord Dullard]

This reminds me of the guy who tried to gross out a bunch of kids into demanding better school lunches by walking them through the process of how a chicken nugget was made.

Except that they were all quite eager to eat the chicken nuggets that resulted. The guy seemed almost flabbergasted.

I honestly don't see the point. People LIKE fat. If its worse healthwise, I don't see how its any worse than any of the other crap they load student lunches up with. I don't see how its any worse than corn sugar.

I - like a large portion of the population - have absolutely no idea what the issue is here.

I have some excellent-tasting Soylent Green here for you. You'll definitely enjoy it.

[Sensei]

In 2009, the New York Times wrote an expose on pink slime, saying that between 2005 and 2009 the product tested positive for salmonella four times higher than traditional burger ground beef.

This would be a call for worry. However, I'd like to see some citation for the original research.

[IronyOwl]

I - like a large portion of the population - have absolutely no idea what the issue is here.

False advertising/inaccurate labeling. They're lying about what's in there.

[Solifuge]

I honestly don't see the point. People LIKE fat. If its worse healthwise, I don't see how its any worse than any of the other crap they load student lunches up with. I don't see how its any worse than corn sugar.

I - like a large portion of the population - have absolutely no idea what the issue is here.

The cuts of animal tissue they're adding into meat are not considered fit for human consumption, and are at much higher risk for carrying bacteria like E. coli. They have to bleach the tissue with ammonia and heavily process it before they can blend it in with actual ground meat.

Imagine going into the store and buying what was labeled as a loaf of bread, only to find that it was actually bread made of 80% flour and 20% finely-ground pine sawdust produced as a byproduct of the wood-milling industry. Sure, it still fills your stomach and can be bought and sold for cheaper, but sawdust has no nutritional value whatsoever; the product is no longer "bread", though after sufficient lobbying you might see it labeled "bread with natural fiber additives", and the ingredients would legally have to list "Pine Sawdust". In the above case, they don't have to label or report any of these animal-based additives, nor the use of ammonia in the processing, because government and the meat industry are in bed with one another.

That, to put it simply, is the issue.


Anyway, there's something to be said for knowing the farm where your livestock are raised and butchered, and knowing what you eat. I don't eat much meat, but when I do, I like to know where it comes from.

[Sir Finkus]

I really don't see the big issue.  Based on everything I've read or heard about it, it's basically meat that is separated from fat trimmings, then exposed to gasses for sanitary reasons.  It looks kind of gross, and now it has a gross name.  Hamburgers still taste fine to me.  This is just media hysteria.

Making meat isn't pretty, and this doesn't really seem all that shocking when you look at the rest of the process.  If you have a problem with "pink slime" you probably shouldn't be eating meat.

As far as labelling goes, if it's just called "ground beef" then there's no problem.  If they're adding it to ground sirloin or chuck, then that's fraud.

[Blargityblarg]

This reminds me of the guy who tried to gross out a bunch of kids into demanding better school lunches by walking them through the process of how a chicken nugget was made.

Except that they were all quite eager to eat the chicken nuggets that resulted. The guy seemed almost flabbergasted.

I honestly don't see the point. People LIKE fat. If its worse healthwise, I don't see how its any worse than any of the other crap they load student lunches up with. I don't see how its any worse than corn sugar.

I - like a large portion of the population - have absolutely no idea what the issue is here.

I have some excellent-tasting Soylent Green here for you. You'll definitely enjoy it.

This is a relevant and completely un-loaded response.

[Lord Dullard]

This reminds me of the guy who tried to gross out a bunch of kids into demanding better school lunches by walking them through the process of how a chicken nugget was made.

Except that they were all quite eager to eat the chicken nuggets that resulted. The guy seemed almost flabbergasted.

I honestly don't see the point. People LIKE fat. If its worse healthwise, I don't see how its any worse than any of the other crap they load student lunches up with. I don't see how its any worse than corn sugar.

I - like a large portion of the population - have absolutely no idea what the issue is here.

I have some excellent-tasting Soylent Green here for you. You'll definitely enjoy it.

This is a relevant and completely un-loaded response.

Actually, it is relevant (and loaded, yes, but it was meant to be interpreted as sarcasm, which is usually loaded simply because of the nature of sarcasm). The issue here is deceptive mislabeling and a lack of information about a product sold under a very generic title.

Although admittedly, Soylent Green was actually supposed to be more nutritional than other types of Soylent, and since this pink slime crap lacks the normal nutritional value of real ground beef, there's a bit of difference in that regard.

[kaijyuu]

Soylent Green was actually supposed to be more nutritional than other types of Soylent

Well, it did have everything used in the human body

[Blargityblarg]

Yeah, to contribute in a non-snarky fashion (and keep in mind that I'm Australian), what did y'all expect? Trimmings (colloquially hooves and snouts, or tits and lips, at least where I am) have been going into sausages basically since the advent of the sausage; this is by no means a huge leap.

[alway]

Hey everyone! I just found out something shocking! Processed food is processed! D:

The above is pretty much the only criticism I seem to find the OP making. I mean, honestly, what the bloody hell did you expect happened to processed food?

What processed food is not:
A conveyor belt with well paid, beautiful employees shaping each patty by hand, followed by the pope blessing each patty as they goes by on its way to be packed with love into their individual boxes.

What processed food is:
A factory which produces food in the same way we process anything else we use: with maximum efficiency moderated by trying to avoid doing anything that will bring down the dreaded hammer of the regulatory bodies.

It is labeled as meat because that's what it is. It may not have the nicest looking texture, but it's still got all the same stuff nutritionally. And as far as the processing goes, that's about on par for any processed food. For example, the high fructose corn syrup we use in just about everything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Production

High-fructose corn syrup is produced by milling corn to produce corn starch, then processing that starch to yield corn syrup, which is almost entirely glucose, and then adding enzymes that change some of the glucose into fructose. The resulting syrup (after enzyme conversion) contains approximately 42% fructose and is HFCS 42. Some of the 42% fructose is then purified to 90% fructose, HFCS 90. To make HFCS 55, the HFCS 90 is mixed with HFCS 42 in the appropriate ratios to form the desired HFCS 55. The enzyme process that changes the 100% glucose corn syrup into HFCS 42 is as follows:

1. Cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called oligosaccharides.
2. Glucoamylase - which is produced by Aspergillus, species of mold, in a fermentation vat — breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose.
3. Xylose isomerase (aka glucose isomerase) converts glucose to a mixture of about 42% fructose and 50–52% glucose with some other sugars mixed in.

Food processing makes use of a combination of biology and chemistry to make our food.

[Lord Dullard]

It is labeled as meat because that's what it is. It may not have the nicest looking texture, but it's still got all the same stuff nutritionally.

Um, except that it doesn't. I assume you haven't actually read the rest of the thread?

Have you ever actually bought ground beef? If you have, you'll notice that they sell it as 'X% lean'. The 'lean' is muscle tissue, which is obviously better for you than fat.

The 'pink slime' is connective tissue separated from fat by processing, not lean muscle tissue.

I'm amazed how many people are determined to make this an issue of 'I don't understand what processed food is' vs. an issue of deceptive advertising and corruption. You really think most Americans don't understand what 'processed' means, in the modern world?

[Skyrunner]

@Alway

Your 'What Processed Food Is Not' made me laugh.

Also, let's use the word 'pink connective tissue' instead of 'slime'. :/
Slime sounds gross. It makes someone draw conclusions from just the name.


@LD
I don't think this is of much special concern. Corporations do this all the time, and at least they're using actual cow parts. I know of at least one incident where mice heads went into a chip bag. Also, I remember cup ramen crawling with maggots, or a chocolate marshmellow biscuit snack having a life moth in there...

[Capntastic]

Hey all of you people who have no problem with it being labelled as ground beef because "it comes from a cow" should see if your logic extends to if they were selling steaks made of pressed pink slime, etc, without them being labelled as such.  It's a matter of them using shady terminology to sell an inferior product as one people typically expect to have a certain baseline of quality.  This is pretty much the same as when they'd basically use dyes to make rotting meat look more healthy, in terms of "let's sell stuff we normally wouldn't be able to to people who have no real way of knowing!"

[GlyphGryph]

See, now, if that's the issue that was being made, I'd accept it as valid. But there's a few problems with that:

1) It's not. The emphasis has been on how terrible it is that people are eating this "pink slime".
2) Yes, this may be getting mislabeled. Except, of course, "beef" is the generic name for "whatever comes from a cow", by most every standard I've ever seen. Maybe I'm wrong here. These obviously aren't prime cuts, and aren't be advertised as such.
3) I don't so what I'm actually supposed to be upset about that wasn't significantly worse than, say, the "pizza is a vegetable debacle". A number of people seem to be pushing the line that the stuff just plain isn't fit for human consumption, without any evidence other than squick. Like Bauglir said, I'm more concerned about the fact that they add non-cow-bits to beef and call it beef, or, heck, about plumped chickens than I am about this.

Doesn't the US have grades of meats for just this purpose, btw?

[Skyrunner]

^^Yes to that. Ground beef is pretty low on the meat food chain.


Also, we're not talking about pressed slime steaks, like Glyph said.