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[TychoTheDwarf]

I loved turkey twizzlers, didn't care it was processed meat. I can guarantee everyone in their lives will have eaten processed meat, and found the thing tasty.

Dump enough salt, artificial flavor enhancement and crack cocaine into any lump of poorly-differentiated animal-byproduct-based goop and you'll have a great result, I'm sure (slim jim anyone?)

[Bauglir]

Yeah, the name "pink slime" seems like it's deliberately loaded.  I think a more appropriate phrase would be something like "fat and gristle", which is what the substance seems to be after I read the article

Don't forget the ammonia-blasted part.

Assuming the ammonia is then removed effectively (and it would have to be to pass FDA inspection, I'm reasonably confident), what's the problem here? It's not like there's a requirement to inform consumers that hexanes are used to decaffeinate coffee (or were, at one point; I think more efficient methods have since been devised, but that's kind of beside the point). Processing techniques aren't really feasible to include on packaging, because you'd have no room for anything else. If you were lucky.

EDIT: Okay, in retrospect, this post is more adversarial than I intended it to be. I apologize.

The point I'm trying to make is that, in all honesty, most people are not qualified to accurately judge what is or is not safe when it comes to processed food, which involves all sorts of arcane shenanigans. Further, the activities in your average slaughterhouse would be generally considered too gruesome for an R-rated horror movie's audience to be okay with. I'm all for freedom of information when it comes to these things, but at the same time, I don't think people are going to use that freedom wisely, and most of the response to this thing has only confirmed that. Accurate labels denoting the real protein content and the increased risk of salmonella are reasonable responses. But the bulk of the controversy seems to be centered around creating a sense of revulsion, and that's just not well-reasoned.

[Sir Finkus]

Or because the loss of customers from gross chemical tasting meat that gives you diarrhea offsets the 3 cents per pound saved.  Reminder that the 30% of meat or whatever is in Taco Bell's mixture could very easily be the sort of meat that is adulterated with pink slime but it is not.  If they were interested purely in lowering as costs as much as possible, that would be an avenue for them.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/taco-buns-fast-food-meat-cook-home/story?id=12826571#.T1xXwPVKV8F (I ignored the video) Here's a decent article from a year ago that mentions pink slime, fast food, and even hints at the pink-slime-pressed-steak method I mentioned upthread.  The core of it is abotu how adulterants are pretty commonly used- but even then, a lot of fast food doesn't use them right now.  And any adulterant that quadruples the rate of salmonella or e.coli is pretty obviously worse than, say, soy filler.

Regardless, there's still a huge, huge, huge, difference between ordering fast food junk and getting mystery trash and buying something at a supermarket and getting misleading mystery trash.

Ground beef has always included "mystery meat" including blood vessels, cartilage, and connective tissue. This really isn't new stuff, they just figured out how to get more of it.

As far as the whole Ammonia thing goes, it sounds bad, but the FDA recognizes it as safe.  We've been using "pink slime" since 2001, and I've never tasted any ammonia in my burgers except for those nasty microwave whitecastle things, which barely have any beef anyway.  For reference, I've had fresh ground beef that I'm sure has no slime in it because I watched it being ground.  Ammonium hydroxide is actually fairly commonly used in food processing, and it even occurs naturally in beef.

The entire controversy is a carefully engineered media frenzy.  The arguments against the practice seem to consist of "it looks and sounds gross" and "it has chemicals in it".  The only fact I've seen presented that worries me is the increased risk of salmonella, but the claims seem shaky at best:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods. From 2005 to 2009, Beef Products had a rate of 36 positive results for salmonella per 1,000 tests, compared to a rate of nine positive results per 1,000 tests for the other suppliers, according to statistics from the program.

All we are really left with is emotional appeals, and very shaky study that shows a slight increase in risk over ordinary ground beef, which could easy be attributed to failure at a single plant or batch of beef.  The media is playing into it because it sells advertising, and the fast food companies are playing into it because the public has been misled to believe the practice is unsafe. 

[G-Flex]

Assuming the ammonia is then removed effectively (and it would have to be to pass FDA inspection, I'm reasonably confident), what's the problem here?

• The FDA isn't foolproof, especially if/when it comes to fairly new processes and procedures the products of which might not be fully known. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but still. Also, the FDA allowing something doesn't necessarily mean that something is healthy, just that it's fit for human consumption.
• There are, from what I've heard/read, doubts regarding the efficacy of ammonia-blasting as a method of sanitizing the meat.

[Capntastic]

Well since I don't really intend to keep re-addressing the same points over and over again, I'm pretty done with this thread.

[G-Flex]

Yet one more reason being a veggie rocks

no..... just no,
if fact, no, just get out, go
you're not wanted 'round these parts.

What's not wanted 'round these parts is wanton and pointless dickishness. Please quit it.

[Flying Dice]

Yet one more reason being a veggie rocks

no..... just no,
if fact, no, just get out, go
you're not wanted 'round these parts.

What's not wanted 'round these parts is wanton and pointless dickishness. Please quit it.

I can't help but feel he is an extremist meatetarian.

That doesn't seem to be it; he's been doing similar (though milder) things in a number of threads. 

[Valid_Dark]

What have I said in what other thread that was similar to that?
To my knowledge I haven't been doing any similar things in any number of other threads,
Flying Dice can you pm me with more info? because I really am interested to see what else I might have said that was offensive without me knowing, so I can avoid saying things like that in the future.

I apologize for that statement, I wasn't thinking, I just.. don't understand vegetarians.

[Bauglir]

Basically, they've decided that it's worth putting in the effort to construct a (largely) healthier diet that's less a burden on the environment, or to avoid a diet that they believe is morally wrong or maybe just questionable. I, myself, have not. Still, it doesn't seem that hard to understand.

Well, that doesn't cover all of the possible reasons. For instance, there's the preachy vegetarians, but that's a thing about pride more than it is about vegetarianism. See: Every other preachy subsect of a group.

[G-Flex]

What have I said in what other thread that was similar to that?
To my knowledge I haven't been doing any similar things in any number of other threads,
Flying Dice can you pm me with more info? because I really am interested to see what else I might have said that was offensive without me knowing, so I can avoid saying things like that in the future.

I apologize for that statement, I wasn't thinking, I just.. don't understand vegetarians.

If you don't understand them, making an effort to understand them will probably go a lot further than saying "no, you're not wanted, get out". I absolutely refuse to believe that you don't recognize that as rude at best.


Regarding other threads, here are a couple examples of sort of flippant, non-constructive stuff:

Ahh Canada,..
America's Hat

America.. Fuck yeah

That second being a response to the thread about the American soldier who shot 16 civilians dead.

[Valid_Dark]

those were jokes, I guess my sense of humor isn't appreciated here, I'll stop trying to joke around so much.

[lordcooper]

Preachy folks of all varieties suck.  Almost as much as those who take a metaphorical dump on harmless choices made by others.  I don't think it's wrong for other people to eat meat (even if I kinda wish they wouldn't), just that it's wrong for me to eat it.

[Gotdamnmiracle]

Preachy folks of all varieties suck.  Almost as much as those who take a metaphorical dump on harmless choices made by others.  I don't think it's wrong for other people to eat meat (even if I kinda wish they wouldn't), just that it's wrong for me to eat it.

I agree. I have my diet because I'm a marathon runner. I don't recommend it to anyone else. I run eight miles a day on my off days. I definitely don't recommend that to anyone else. Just because I'm a masochist who loves self discipline doesn't mean anyone else should be. I hate people who tell others how to live.

Weird goo is gross I guess, but is it really all that different from any other petroleum synthesized foodstuff? You know what IS definitively disgusting though? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axU9ngbTxKw (I recommend watching this if you have a few minutes handy.)

[DJ]

(largely) healthier diet

[citation needed]

And I was under the impression that the "kind" Valid was referring to is smug people. Because left-field comments about superiority of vegetarian diet are kinda smug IMO.

[Bauglir]

(largely) healthier diet

[citation needed]

Eh. "Largely" indicates that it's not an absolute. It's not entirely due to the diet, and I'd wager more of it is to do with the fact that you have to plan a diet anyway, which overcomes the major hurdle. You can have an equally healthy diet with meat, but since people don't have to do as much planning around protein and iron (although that's not exactly hard to overcome without meat) in the first place, you aren't in a position where planning out every nutrient is just another step in something you're already doing.

That said, plants are likelier to have better fatty acids (animal fats are far more frequently saturated) and a wider spread of vitamins and minerals than the meat most commonly eaten in Western society (which isn't all society, obviously). The tendency to shy away from organ meats cuts out most everything but muscle tissue; a healthy slew of B vitamins, iron, and protein with fat, and little else. Replacing that volume with plants can help get a wider variety of things crammed into a meal, but only if you plan it out, and keeping meat in the diet hardly precludes that.

This post's information not included in the original for space reasons.