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A concerned reader sent me a link to an article today that absolutely grossed me out and I thought I had seen it all where processed factory food is concerned.
Advanced Meat Recovery. AKA “Pink Slime”
This picture is of mechanically separated chicken meat, also called Advanced Meat Recovery (yes, you read that right) before it is made into chicken nuggets, bologna, hot dogs, salami – uh, shall I continue? Companies that produce processed food with this nauseating ingredient try very hard not to let photos like this get out to the public for obvious reasons.
According to Fooducate, this chicken paste is the result of cleaning every bit of meat off the chicken bones by passing it through a high-pressure sieve.
It tastes horrible, so artificial flavors like MSG and many other additives must be mixed in to make it palatable. The color is very odd and unappetizing requiring the cover of artificial colors.
It is covered in bacteria, so the paste must be soaked in ammonia to degerm it (see comment below from Stanley Fishman Esq. discrediting denials of this from Snopes).
Anyone up for the fast-food drive-through?
Seeing a photo like this, I am so grateful for my local poultry farm! The chickens are happy, run free, and are fed GMO-free grain to supplement their natural foraging diet.
What Restaurants Use Pink Slime?
It’s not just fast food joints that prefer to use this food-like substance.
It seems that Subway chicken sandwiches may be channeling pink slime too according to a report which conducted tests on the chains “oven-roasted” chicken sandwiches and strips.
Believe it or not, they tested less than 50% actual meat according to CBC Marketplace.
Note that things didn’t used to be this bad! Back in the “good ‘ole days” of fast food, the stuff was actually Real Food that was just cooked fast!
References
(1) PHOTO: Pre-Chicken Nugget Meat Paste, AKA Mechanically Separated Poultry
(2) Guess What’s in the Picture? (Foodlike Substance)
I have heard about this before. My question is this: are there any good hotdogs? Trader Joes sells the nitrate and nitrite free ones, would those be okay? Just curious.
I think your best bet are kosher hot dogs, or the ones that a number of companies are marketing now (at least in Canada) that have not fiollers and are made with meat. I’m not familiar with Trader Joes, but anything that has only meat in it, no fillers, and no nitrate that turns into nitrite, have go to be an improvement over the ordinary ones. There have been a few problems with meat packing/processing here in Canada, and my DD refused to buy anything Maple Leaf sold, for months afterwards. Caveat emptor, and read your labels.
Ray,thank you for helping to expose yet more misinformation from Snopes. The way they treated you was despicable,and the arrogance they showed is revolting.
Snopes is always defending big corporations, big agriculture, big pharma, big everything. Their claim that they are "the experts" and we should blindly believe everything they say because they "are the experts", is ridiculous.
We should reason, research and think for ourselves, not depend on self proclaimed "experts" who support the party line on everything.
I agree about Snopes.com They are downright fraudulent in their advice at times. But just try telling them about it and you’ll get the whole of their wrath! I wonder what makes Barbara think she is such a know-it-all? It’s all opinion based, not fact based, AFAIC. Mere hot air from a couple of wind bags.
Yes, that awful pink slime and some other junk like it is produced in my home State of SD. There are “meat glues” and other stuff which are so nauseating to talk about it makes me gaggy just to think about it.
Two things:
Snopes had "exposed" a popular email during the height of the Iraq war where Starbucks had refused to send a Marine unit some coffee. Long story short, they had defended Starbucks, and when I pointed out in an email to them that Starbucks really was guilty of what they were originally accused of, they dismissed me by saying that they were the experts, and I shouldn't mess with the experts. (I even copied and pasted from Starbucks own website for proof, and Snopes basically refused to talk about it anymore.)
Secondly, there's no possible way that a meat packing plant has anything dripping on the product from any mechanical device. (In reference to the ammonia supposedly dripping on the chicken by accident.) I work for a large company that makes packaging for the food industry – we don't even make the food – and we have to go through so many inspections, and meet so many standards that is simply inconceivable that a meat packing plant just has leaky equipment and roofs, and things are just casually getting into the food.
The food is processed, nasty, and foul, but they are "approved" practices.
When I take off every little bit of chicken off the bones of my pastured poultry (by hand of course) and then blend in the food processor to make chicken salad, it is definitely NOT PINK!
I just pulled all the meat off the Christmas turkey, and then cooked down the bones and scraps for broth. NONE of that was pink.
Hmmm. I am not surprised or grossed out by the color of the meat. It is meat recovered from the bones where there is a higher concentration of blood flow so the pinkness of the meat is directly related to that fact. :shrug
Linda, that is only partly true. The government banned the use of "advanced meat recovery "for beef, because of mad cow, but not for chicken. And the government allows ground meat to be injected with ammonia to supposedly kill the e coli in the filthy scraps and slaughterhouse floor trimmings they now add to ground beef.The result is a pink slime that looks very much like the picture in this article.
Did I hear Jamie Oliver right in saying that that method is not used in the US anymore?
Anonymous, McDonalds french fries are not gluten free. In 2006, McConalds stated that the "flavoring agent" they put in the oil for frying the fries contains wheat and dairy components.
It is quite possible that your daughter is allergic to something in the "flavoring agent", which is unique to Mcdonalds and a secret.