This post is not for the faint of heart. . . or stomach! So if you fall into either or both of these categories, then you just may want to stop reading now!
Still with me? Okay. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. . .
I’m not sure when I was first introduced to the term “Mystery Meat”, but I’m sure it was in a school or college cafeteria. The menu may have said hamburger or cheeseburger, but what we found slapped between the two halves of bun certainly didn’t look, smell, taste or feel like any hamburger mom made at home!
The same holds true for the “meat-like substance” used to make menu items “Meat”loaf, Spaghetti with “Meat” Sauce, “Meat”ball Sub, and Salisbury “Steak” with Gravy. We may have joked about it, but, in all seriousness, joking was the only way to keep the brain occupied so that it didn’t ask too many questions about why what it was sensing in the mouth and what it was expecting to find there didn’t compute!
That was more than 20 years ago. Mystery Meat hasn’t gone away. Many would argue it has become even more mysterious today! Do we really know what our kids are eating? Dare I even begin to “go there” given what we currently know about non-organically raised plants and animals and the pervasiveness of genetically modified foods, processed foods and manufactured foods?
I dare, alright! Education is key if we are to turn things around for ourselves and, more importantly, for our children!
Thanks to Michael Moss and the
New York Times, today’s “Mystery Meat” is a bit LESS mysterious! (Link to full story published December 31, 2009, follows)
It seems as if a company by the name of Beef Products Inc. produces a “product made from beef” that is a component in ground beef sold nationwide and used by the federal school lunch program, as well as grocery chains and fast food restaurants.
Hmmmm. . . “a component of ground beef”? Since when did ground beef stop being g-r-o-u-n-d beef? And whatever became of McDonald’s “two all-beef patties”? (That’s for another day!)
So, what is this “product made from beef”? Beef Products takes the fatty, slaughterhouse trimmings that used to only be deemed fit for cooking oil or pet food (also a post for another day) and converts it into “lean beef” by liquefying the fat and extracting the remnants of protein using a centrifuge. YUM!!!
They then freeze this “mashlike substance” into blocks or chips and out the door it goes, right to your friendly grocer, fast food restaurant or school cafeteria to be mixed with the ground beef that you ultimately purchase and consume!
Oh, silly me. I forgot to tell you about how they attempt to remove the bacterial contamination (e.g.,
Salmonella and
E. coli) that is typically prevalent in slaughter house trimmings such as these, as compared to inside cuts of meat. . . they treat it with ammonia gas!
Yep! The same stuff used to make the cleaning and disinfecting products you use on your floors and windows! Oh, but don’t expect to find THAT on the food label! The company isn’t required to list ammonia as an ingredient because it is classified as a “processing agent”. Now, don’t you feel better?
In case you’re wondering, school lunch program officials and others sometimes complained that the “beef” from Beef Products had a strong ammonia smell or taste. Imagine that!
Above I mentioned that they “attempt to remove the bacterial contamination” using this ammonia process because results from testing performed by the federal school lunch program indicated that the Beef Products product had a contamination rate 4 times that of other school lunch program ground beef product suppliers. (And just when did the food that used to be sold in school cafeterias become “products”? Yet ANOTHER post!)
At least school lunch program officials were watching out for our kids enough to test all “ground beef” served in the schools and destroying those “products” that were found to be contaminated. However, the same can’t be said for other customers of the contaminated “beef product”. They were never notified of the contamination because the Beef Products product was never tested by anyone other than the school lunch program.
Okay. I could go on about this, but I won’t. (
You’re welcome.)
These were just some of the “lowlights” from the article. You owe it to yourself, and to those you love, to read the article
"Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned" in its entirety. Just be sure to read it BEFORE you take a bite of your burger!
And if you haven’t ever given a passing thought to where, or what, your food was before it got to you or even if what you are eating is REALLY what you think it is, then perhaps you will begin to do so.
This is neither an isolated incident nor an exceptional case. It is but another frantically-flashing, red, warning light illuminating yet another unaddressed, underlying cause of the decline in health that we are currently witnessing.
I hope Michael Moss’s article will awaken your awareness and inspire you to start asking the tough yet necessary questions.
Taking inspired action,
Maria
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