Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Pink Slime

I don't know about you, but I have a few people who like to be "helpful" each week, and send me stuff to enrich my life. I get emails from people sending me phishing notices, virus notices, and even sometimes copies of police reports. Yeah, someone sent me an email alert from the local sheriff’s office - like I am not already scared of the world.

Well, someone sent me something the other day that was dealing with pink slime. I had never heard of it, but apparently a cable show (Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution) covered it – and perhaps it started the “helpful” emails. Below is a clip – please don’t watch this if you are eating lunch.



I don’t eat hot dogs because of fillers, I don’t eat hamburgers because I just don’t like them, but I will occasionally eat other things with ground beef. And the email – and the clip – really turned my stomach. Well, I am not sure if I want to change how I am eating, though I don’t think I want to eat ground beef anymore. It is not that all ground beef has pink slime in it, but 70% of it does. And how can you tell. I just wish the USDA would make places just tell us if the meat contains pink slime. I guess since the USDA seems to have a tight relationship with big food, sometimes USDA doesn’t act in the best interest of its citizenry. If you are a US Citizen, you can sign a petition here.

I don’t purchase ground beef to cook with at home. I normally use ground turkey, and when that is unavailable (which is rare), then ground chicken. And now I am wondering if there is pink slime associated with turkey. If anyone knows, an answer would be appreciated.

What really worries me that pink slime is just the tip of the iceberg. Am I eating better food than my grandparents? I somehow don’t think I am.

9 comments:

Xmichra said...

Pretty sure if you knew what was in your food, you wouldn't eat.

We are lucky, we have a butcher that is really good in one of our grocery stores that you can watch copr and grind whatever it is that you want. You can pay less per pound for the packaged tube of ground beef... but why would you want to eat crap?

I've learned a lot about eating the last few months, and pretty well stay away from anything refined. If it grosses me out to think about it, then I shouldn't eat it.

Anonymous said...

Ya, food today isn't really food, it's chemicals. Even the good stuff, I hear, like fruits and vegetables, don't really have the nutrition it used to have.

I like meat, but you know, we can't all go kill a cow and have it processed. Wish I could. They taste better than feed lot cows.

Leesa said...

xmichra: I am not a big meat eater at all. Less so now. And after finding this out, food lost its appeal for days.

knot: I was listening to an author sell his recent book on nutrition. I can't remember his name nor his book, but the gist was that in the US, food started to go down in nutritional value in the 30s. Lots of corn in food, etc, to make it cheaper because of the depression.

Anonymous said...

I hadn't heard of pink slime before. Shit, just when I thought it was safe to grill a burger. Anyway, in answer to your last question, I'm sure you're not eating better than your grandparents. Witness the e-coli outbreak in Europe.

Leesa said...

I have a relative who won't eat non-American picked fruit. And I always giggle to myself, thinking of all of the food in the supermarket, foreign fruit is probably safer than most processed foods.

Jennifer P said...

I've been trying to get an answer to this too! I watched the Jamie Oliver shows and no longer buy chop meat(beef) in those packages with air in them. I buy meat that I know the butcher in my market has ground. BUT I like to use ground turkey too and you simply can't find it except in those air filled packages. What to do?? I want/need to know if they also are processed the way the beef is using disgusting parts you would not feed to a dog and then washed in ammonia. How do we find out???

Finding Pam said...

I was gressed out after watching Jamie Oliver's show on pink slime. Our food has become so obliterated with additives.

We eat lots of turkey and chicken and very little beef. We are so removed from our food and where it comes from.

Leesa said...

Jennifer P: lots of people are asking the same question about turkey. I used to buy turkey in tubes; now I purchase it from a butcher shop. The tubes did not really look like meat, and now, it seems to look a bit better. Not sure if it helps, though.

Finding Pam: that show actually has temporarily made me more conscious about what I purchase at the store. I hope it is not a temporary thing.

Mocha said...

I was searching "pink slime" and came across your blog. I am so disgusted. I stopped eating red meat years ago. I recently purchased ground turkey and found that it has changed. The meat had no substance to it and became a weird mush when I finished seasoning it. It was like cake batter. I had never encountered this and I buy this brand all the time. I began to wonder if they were putting the pink slime in ground turkey now. This is the nail in the coffin. I am becoming vegan.