Pink Slime in Ground Beef ?
Yeah, there is a filler used in ground beef and it's being called Pink
Slime. It's made from pieces of beef that would ordinarily be thrown
away but they heat it, spin off the fat, and treat it for bacteria.
Then the filler is actually a lean product. Of course the problem is
that it's a processed meat product and not a cut.
One source says that 40% of hamburgers contain the Pink Slime while
another source says that 60% of the ground beef at the supermarket
contains Pink Slime.
The odd thing is that the Pink Slime is lean and therefor is used to
make the ground beef leaner. So it could be in any ground beef grind
of any fat content.
Actually, I've been having trouble with the quality of ground beef
from a major supermarket. Price is no object and I have tried store-
brand ground chuck, store-brand ground round, store-brand ground
sirloin, and store-brand 85% Angus. But any of these can have issues
of gristle to spit out. I've just been waiting for the government to
catch the obvious problem and make the headlines.
Of course I suspect two things that I've mentioned in the past. As
investors cheer companies on the stock market that move to higher
profit margin business practices, consumers are then fooled into
higher prices or lower quality. The other suspect is simply an often
unarticulated but prevelant business practice of establishing a market
brand and then reducing quality. So let's articulate it and call it
EMRQ or possibly EBRQ .
Now this is the American hamburger and an election year, so to get rid
of the Pink Slime who do you vote for ?
Well, I don't know so let's concentrate on the good ground beef.
Ground beef that says "vegetarian diet", "no hormones", "no
antibiotics", "no additives", and/or "no fillers" is probably without
Pink Slime. Also, ground beef that says "organic" is highly regulated
for the use of that terminology and should be without Pink Slime.
However, organic beef could be free ranging grass feed or grain feed
and I think grain feed is more like what the average person is used to.
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