Prefer not to eat then eating fast food?

tincanonastring wrote: »

I've still yet to see anything about dangerous, toxic chemicals. The only things being posted are changes to production techniques in response to consumer demand. The process and ingredients themselves aren't dangerous, but trying to sell a product to an ignorant public is decidely so (from a business standpoint, anyway).

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I would say that it's analogous to: "politician changes position due to bad
publicity or pressure group."

Agreed^^^

In....for trying to use the food babe as a credible source.

Didn't she get sued for some of these claims?

It won't hurt you to skip a meal. Especially if the choice is between skipping and blowing your goals. It's better to not eat than to overeat for weight loss. You should focus on planning though. There is no long term success with out planning

kshama2001 wrote: »

Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

Alright then - pink slime.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-laz-pink-slime-20140815-story.html

...For the uninitiated, pink slime, a.k.a. "lean, finely textured beef," is a mixture of the parts of the cow that everyone else doesn't want and chemicals such as ammonia to keep it fresh.

Pink slime is used as an industrial filler to make beef go further -- kind of like the way drug dealers cut their product with cheaper ingredients to make more money.

...According to the Wall Street Journal, production of pink slime has doubled since hitting rock bottom in 2012.

As to who's using it now, that's a mystery. McDonald's said in May that it still wasn't using pink slime. In fact, I couldn't find a single company that's admitted using it again.

But obviously someone is. Otherwise production of pink slime wouldn't be up 100%.

So I'm with you, Laura -- I want to know who's using it.

At this point, though, it looks like nobody's fessing up.

http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp

How terrible of the US to try and eliminate waste in the meat industry? The snopes article lays everything out nicely. I have no issues with eating products made with mechanically-separated meat on occasion (we just had hot dogs the other day).

No, it's not "soaked in ammonia," and no it doesn't contain eyeballs or bones, it's simply a way to get all of the edible meat off of the bones. Also, beef MSM is banned in the US, so you'll generally only find mechanically separated chicken or pork.

Considering that many cultures eat organs and other offal from animals, I won't whine about there being a little cartilage in my hot dogs.

*Edit: changed "wine" to "whine" because it was driving me crazy.

You may find treating meat with small amounts of ammonia acceptable; I don't want ammonia-treated hamburger. I'd rather pay more money for higher quality ingredients. Also, I don't like the way the presence of Pink Slime is not disclosed.

From your link:

Considering that ammonium hydroxide occurs naturally in most meats anyway, and the amounts used in meat processing are so small that it doesn't raise the amount of ammonium hydroxide found in the meat by much at all, no, it does not bother me.

I'd much rather have safe meat than to crap my brains out with E. coli- or salmonella-related food poisoning. All it does is raise the pH high enough to kill harmful bacteria.

Edited to add this: http://www.gvsd.org/cms/lib02/PA01001045/Centricity/Domain/18/Questions and Answers about Ammonium Hydroxide use in Food Production.pdf

Ammonium hydroxide is used in many foods, not just meat processing. Obviously, when paired with a viral image like the one above, a scary-sounding chemical being used in food processing can cause panic to the uninformed masses. If you don't want to consume it, fine - but there is no reason to try to scare people away from it. It is something that streamlines our food processing and makes our meat safe for consumption in an affordable way. There are enough people who go hungry in this country as it is. Why lobby to fix something that isn't broken out of fear and make food processing more expensive and less reliable than necessary just to lower food availability and raise the prices, and make it even harder for people such as the homeless and the poor to access the nutrition that they need?

PeachyCarol wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »

kshama2001 wrote: »

Alright then - pink slime.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-laz-pink-slime-20140815-story.html

...For the uninitiated, pink slime, a.k.a. "lean, finely textured beef," is a mixture of the parts of the cow that everyone else doesn't want and chemicals such as ammonia to keep it fresh.

Pink slime is used as an industrial filler to make beef go further -- kind of like the way drug dealers cut their product with cheaper ingredients to make more money.

...According to the Wall Street Journal, production of pink slime has doubled since hitting rock bottom in 2012.

As to who's using it now, that's a mystery. McDonald's said in May that it still wasn't using pink slime. In fact, I couldn't find a single company that's admitted using it again.

But obviously someone is. Otherwise production of pink slime wouldn't be up 100%.

So I'm with you, Laura -- I want to know who's using it.

At this point, though, it looks like nobody's fessing up.

http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp

How terrible of the US to try and eliminate waste in the meat industry? The snopes article lays everything out nicely. I have no issues with eating products made with mechanically-separated meat on occasion (we just had hot dogs the other day).

No, it's not "soaked in ammonia," and no it doesn't contain eyeballs or bones, it's simply a way to get all of the edible meat off of the bones. Also, beef MSM is banned in the US, so you'll generally only find mechanically separated chicken or pork.

Considering that many cultures eat organs and other offal from animals, I won't whine about there being a little cartilage in my hot dogs.

*Edit: changed "wine" to "whine" because it was driving me crazy.

You may find treating meat with small amounts of ammonia acceptable; I don't want ammonia-treated hamburger. I'd rather pay more money for higher quality ingredients. Also, I don't like the way the presence of Pink Slime is not disclosed.

From your link:

The meat is gassed to affect its pH.

I hate to break it to you, but ammonia is a naturally occurring compound in food.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/26/5/487.full.pdf

The meat is gassed to kill E. coli and salmonella, which is more likely to be a problem with industrial agriculture. Rather than changing factory farming practices, the industry wants to gas the pathogens produced.

Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned

By MICHAEL MOSS

Published: December 30, 2009

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

In July, school lunch officials temporarily banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers.

Presented by The Times with the school lunch test results, top department officials said they were not aware of what their colleagues in the lunch program had been finding for years.

In response, the agriculture department said it was revoking Beef Products’ exemption from routine testing and conducting a review of the company’s operations and research. The department said it was also reversing its policy for handling Beef Products during pathogen outbreaks. Since it was seen as pathogen-free, the processed beef was excluded from recalls, even when it was an ingredient in hamburgers found to be contaminated.

The Beef Products case reveals a schism between the main Department of Agriculture and its division that oversees the school lunch program, a divide that underscores the government’s faltering effort to make hamburger safe. The U.S.D.A. banned the sale of meat found to be contaminated with the O157:H7 strain of E. coli 15 years ago, after a deadly outbreak was traced to Jack in the Box restaurants. Meat tainted with salmonella is also a hazard. But while the school lunch program will not buy meat contaminated with salmonella, the agriculture department does not ban its sale to the general public.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Readers’ Comments
"The humane treatment of the animals is at best an afterthought, as is the welfare of all the humans who consume these products."
Muzykant, Cambridge, MA

johnnyh55 wrote: »

I would need to do more planning but probably change my lifestyle altogether. I don't often cook at home and it's because the kitchen is not clean enough for my taste. I live with family roommates and they have a cat and it sheds it's hair everywhere on the kitchen table, on the couch, on the kitchen floor and sometimes on the kitchen counter. This is one of the reason I almost always eat out and never feel like cooking. I hardly ever do groceries because of this. I basically just use my room in the apartment and that's it. I would need to move out to get my life back on track but then rent would go up and well I would have less money for food but probably I wouldn't eat out as much. Anyway those are my life problems and don't concern any of you but thanks for the help. Maybe ill buy some on-the-go foods that I can bring and munch on them all day at work.

It is
~o.k. to skip meals and
~o.k. to eat out and
~o.k. to buy on-the-go-foods.
Pay more attention to the calorie load for the whole day (24 hours period).

Cout your calories and your protein grams.
Eat at your calorie deficit and eat all your protein.
You will be o.k.

Jamie Oliver on Pink Slime in 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Z6AgHthJs

"Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs and after this process we can give it to humans."

"Everything about this process to me is about no respect for food, or people, or children."