U.S. reaches Peak Meat!

[niggles]

http://permaculture.org.au/2012/03/08/peak-meat-u-s-meat-consumption-falling/

I guess theres only so much cow you can compact into your intestines!

[qualia]

do you think it shows decline because they're all starting to feast on this instead?

[niggles]

lol!

I think its probably cos 46.5 million americans are on foodstamps, and foodstamps dont allow 'all you can meat'.

[quarterflesh]

what is that qualia?

[niggles]

Its fast food!

This should explain:

http://blog.fooducate.com//2009/08/03/guess-whats-in-the-picture-foodlike-substance/

[whitewind]

Fuck me that's gross. I can imagine just how many colourings go in to make it that lurid pink colour, otherwise it would be a nasty grey.

Edited March 10, 2012 by whitewind

[qualia]

i shudder thinking about it. looks like strawberry ice cream no?

[qualia]

Fuck me that's gross. I can imagine just how many colourings go in to make it that lurid pink colour, otherwise it would be a nasty grey.

 

colouring, flavouring, saturated with ammonia to kill the bacteria. shit humans were never meant to touch, let alone eat.

what has become to our species?

[niggles]

incidently..

70% of all Ground Beef Contains "Pink Slime" ... and USDA Bought 7 Million Pounds of the Stuff for School Lunches

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-10-11/70-all-ground-beef-contains-pink-slime-and-usda-bought-7-million-pounds-stuff

[whitewind]

It's a vicious circle. Feed your kids shite, they end up dumb which means they will continue to eat shite, and will feed their kids shite as well, making them dumb too (Omega 3's). If there is one thing I can thank my parents for, it was feeding me well - organic food, home made bread etc. I don't trust anything we are told from mainstream sources about food, it's mostly lies. My brother in law is vegan - has been all of his life - and he won't touch eggs or honey even (as taking the honey distresses the bees). And he is the strongest, healthiest bloke I know and frequently works all night, rarely gets cranky.

I have personally worked in the food industry and I know just how many nasty toxins can be sprayed on to plants without anyone knowing; but it's worse with animals, which get forcibly injected (with what, sometimes it can be very difficult to determine) and they live in the most horrific conditions. I lived in the UK during the BSE "crisis" where cattle were being forced to be cannibals (when they are naturally vegetarian) and when the shit hit the fan the meat industry pretended to fix the problem, but the reality is they didn't - profit must come first. Genetically modified soya is being grown in South America, virgin rainforest is cleared to make way for a cash crop which gets shipped en masse to feed cattle in America whose living conditions are hard to believe - these beasts are meant to roam, not be given a few square metres of mud to trample. I lived next to a sheep farm in mid Wales, my mother got sprayed one day as she tended her veggies (and what the hell was a farmer mass-spraying a sheep paddock for, I wonder?) with no warning, no signage. She came up in a rash that couldn't be identified and didn't settle for 18 months. And did the government do anything? No, and neither did the farmer. He refused to admit what it was that was being sprayed and refused responsibility.

Fish caught in the ocean is never tested for toxins, but who knows what they've picked up from our filthy shores? Nuclear power stations are often located by the sea, illegally dumping irradiated water. The number of people I know who have contracted an unexplained disease from the sea is astonishing. How come the ocean environment contains so many pathogens dangerous to us is beyond me - until you know how much of our sewerage is dumped in there. To say nothing of toxins seeping out of the ground from old factories further upstream. I'm certainly not going to eat any fish caught in Sydney's beautiful harbour, that's for sure. How come the rise in cancer in the population? They say it's natural, and because we are longer lived, but clearly the more cancer-causing agents in the environment will ensure that the cancer rate increases. But because you can't pinpoint a specific cause for most cancers, and they take years to develop, no-one is to blame. And certainly not your food.

Even if toxins sprayed on to our veggies don't make it to market (as we are consistently told) then those toxins must wash off the veggies and end up in the groundwater. Not all of them break down so readily, and DDT is still being used (illegally and unknown) by farmers who bought large stocks way back when it was considered good. Who's going to check up on these people? And if they do, what are they going to do? All they can do is tell them to stop. It would bring the whole industry in to disrepute if even one were prosecuted, as one farmer could simply claim it's industry wide and he's just being picked on. Abattoirs are like hell on earth, and chicken farms even worse. Not only do those birds live in a horrific environment (the noise pollution cannot be described, only experienced) the amount of antibiotics used just to keep them healthy is astonishing, and will ensure that many resistant strains of bacteria will develop in the next decade.

Genetically Modified crops, touted as the revolution that will help feed an exponentially growing population, are fraught with bad management, and totally controlled by a few huge corporations The advances in production are a dream, and will be curtailed by the simple lack of one major nutrient that is rapidly becoming scarce - phosphate, derived from bat droppings harvested from caves in South America. Production of all food supplies will fall when this runs out, and together with the high price of oil truly will make monoculture agriculture unsustainable. In the meantime, farmers fork out to be part of a revolution that has, until now, shown very little in the way of production increase.

Making food for profit stinks, and so does the food industry. There is enough food to feed the world right now, only the distribution network (i.e. capitalism) ensures that some people go without. But we can't continue to increase the population and rape the soil still further, and we must turn to less ravaging, gentler ways to share our food.

[niggles]

'Pink slime' beef off US school menu

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17393376

[qualia]

'Pink Slime': Sounds Gross, But How Does It Taste?

All this angst over "pink slime" has made one thing clear: We don't always know what we're getting when we bite into a big juicy burger.

Which leaves unanswered some of the most basic questions in the debate over what the meat industry calls lean finely textured beef, a processed meat filler that experts say has found its way into much of the ground beef consumed in the United States.

But as a professional eater, I needed to know two things: What does this stuff do to the taste and texture of ground beef? And how can consumers know when they're eating it?

Neither answer came easily, the former because of the sheer volume of beef I needed to eat, the latter because of the rather opaque way ground beef is made.

`SLIME' IN THE NEWS

For schools, that opacity began to clear Thursday, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that as of the fall the National School Lunch Program will allow districts to choose ground beef that does not contain the product. Previously, it was difficult for schools to know whether the beef they bought from the feds had it or not.

That's because pink slime – no matter what you call it or what you think of it – really is made from beef and therefore doesn't need to be listed as a separate ingredient.

But Thursday's announcement doesn't do much for the average consumer.

At the grocer, a steak is a steak, and it is nearly always labeled by the cut of beef it's from. There was a time when ground beef was similarly labeled and you knew at least roughly what part of the animal you were getting. And though some packages still indicate "ground chuck" or "ground sirloin," today most is labeled simply as "ground beef."

Most consumers don't care. They'd rather focus on another part of the label – the fat percentage. And producers don't care. It has made it easier for them to take a more amalgamated approach to ground beef, using whatever cuts they want or have without worrying about spelling it out.

Now introduce lean finely textured beef, and the meat picture is further muddied.

The product is made from bits of meat left over from other cuts. It's heated and spun to remove the fat, then compressed into blocks for mixing into conventional ground beef. Because it's so lean and inexpensive, producers often mix it into fattier meat to produce an overall leaner product.

That means two packages labeled "ground beef 80 percent lean" may look and sound the same but be composed of different meats. One could be unadulterated ground beef made from cuts of meat containing 20 percent fat. The other could be made from poorer quality – much fattier – meat but cut with and made leaner by pink slime, a term coined by a federal microbiologist grossed out by it and now widely used by critics and food activists.

How do you tell the difference? For the most part, you don't.

"You can't differentiate beef from beef," said Jeremy Russell, a spokesman for the National Meat Association, which represents processors, suppliers and exporters. "Talking to your retailer would be the only way."

So that's what I did. But it got me only partial answers.

THE FIELD RESEARCH

At grocer No. 1, the folks behind the butcher counter were able to show me one brand, a pricy "all-natural" ground beef that did not contain the meat filler. But for the many other and far less expensive varieties of ground beef? They had no way of knowing.

Grocer No. 2 presented the opposite problem. The workers there found one brand that definitely did have the pink stuff, but they couldn't say whether any others did or didn't.

And don't be fooled by the "all-natural" beef label at store No. 1. That term is unregulated, so it doesn't really mean anything. At another store, another brand of ground beef could be similarly labeled but still contain the meat filler.

But the term "organic" is regulated, and that provides a clue. If you can find it – and are willing to pay the price – ground beef labeled organic cannot contain lean finely textured beef.

Despite the odds, I had lucked out. Between the two grocers, I'd managed to identify two packages of 85 percent lean ground beef, one with pink slime and one without. Time to taste.

By label alone, it was clear we were talking different beef demographics. The pink slime-free product bragged that it was minimally processed and that the cows had been raised without antibiotics, growth hormones or animal byproducts in their food. Price – $5.99 per pound. The pink slime version? Just a minimalist "compare and save." Price – $3.09 per pound.

Outwardly, they seemed the same: They smelled the same, and they looked basically the same, though the pink slime sample was slightly lighter in color. Until you touched them. The all-natural sample was slightly fattier to touch. That seemed odd, since both products should have the same fat content.

INTO THE MOUTH

For the taste test, I kept it simple and pure. I formed a half-pound of each ground beef into a thick burger patty, adding nothing to the meat. And though I prefer my burgers on the grill, I decided to fry these in a skillet because it's easier to control the cooking, ensuring both would be cooked to the same degree and under the same conditions.

I added nothing to the pan. Meat this fatty generally bleeds out a robust amount of grease, so I wasn't concerned with sticking. That was my second surprise. The pink slime patty released very little fat during cooking. The other patty gave off two or three times as much.

About 5 minutes per side, and I declared them medium-rare. After giving them a few minutes to rest, I seasoned them lightly with salt and pepper, then cut in.

First, the unadulterated burger. The aroma was luscious. The meat was juicy, tender and nicely seared. Where I'd cut, juices slowly dribbled out onto the plate, collecting in a pool. The taste was savory and meaty, with big beefy flavor. The chew had just the right texture, substantial but giving. Basically, everything you would want in a burger.

The pink slime burger also was perfectly seared and drew me in with an equally alluring aroma. But no juices collected on the plate. Or dribbled out. Or were apparent in the meat in really any way. The taste was – OK. I took another taste of the first burger, then back to the pink slime burger.

It was not bad. But nor was it good. It was flat. I added more salt. No. It was simply one-dimensional.

And then there was the texture. Unpleasantly chewy bits of what I can only describe as gristle, though they were not visible, seemed to stud the meat of the pink slime burger. The result was a mealy chew that, while not overtly unpleasant, didn't leave me wanting another bite.

Of course, I did take another bite. In the interest of good journalism, I ate both burgers entirely. And then I felt sick. I'm confident that has nothing to do with slime of any sort.

___

Freelance food writer Michele Kayal in Washington contributed to this report.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/pink-slime-ground-beef-taste-test_n_1353058.html

[niggles]

Love it! That was an interesting read, and about what i expected.

[woof woof woof]

some guy in The Netherlands is growing meat in a lab with the idea to have it ready for consumption in the near future,.... what will people be feeding that tissue to keep it growing. .....? grain extracts??? sugars?? pink slime? hahaha

[niggles]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/pink-slime-maker-files-bankruptcy-pink-slips-galore-pink-sheets-next

Pink slime company is now having a hard time selling its goop!

[niggles]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...gazine-17615456

Another pink slime article. ITs filled with ridiculous statements.

3 out of 4 pink slime factories have been closed due to public getting cross at shit food.

But, says Martin, if they had been thinking ahead, they might have called the product something consumer-friendly like "Pro-leana".

 

Apparently that would help.

But, like most experts, he believes it is far too late to rebrand the product now, as it would be seen as a marketing "ploy", which would further inflame consumer anger.

and.....

If they can wait it out, and let the hype die down, about six months from now no-one will think anything of it and they can come back with the product.

These are all quotes from branding and marketing consultants who seem to think humans have pink slime for brains.