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The subject of "Pink Slime" goes deeper than just a surface perusal would give. Were you also fooled into thinking that this was pretty much a laughing matter? After all, who would have thought anybody could seriously consider loading our precious hamburgers with something as obnoxious as "Pink Slime"? And especially if the meat industry is the one who is doing it and pulling the wool over our eyes in order to make a few more bucks.
And, my goodness, I said to myself, how could I eat such an objectionable substance? Food has to look good, taste good, have a pleasing texture in my mouth, and display good color that uplifts my spirit and it should be nutritionally sound, and I will add, it should not be laced with harmful additives, At first glance I went for all the emotional reasons one might employ to talk me into believing something outrageous! Digging a little deeper, I found other points of view that started pulling on me.
The question I ask myself, that is hopefully,the bottom line: Is Pink Slime as it has been dubbed in the TV Industry, healthy and safe for the American public to eat on a daily basis? Since Americans eat three hamburgers per week which would equal 156 hamburgers per year, not to mention the hamburger consumed in casseroles, meat loaves, stuffed cabbage and bell peppers, I will say that we eat a lot of hamburger which up to now has been laced with Pink Slime.
What is Pink Slime? It is the fat and scraps of the better cuts of meat which are trimmed of fat, heated to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, centrifuged and separated out into fat and lean meat: adding these meat trimmings actually adds to the hamburger's lean content. The lower fat product is then compressed into blocks and mixed in ground meat and treated with Ammonium Hydroxide gas which is dispersed throughout the meat to kill the E. Coli and Salmonella.
That ammonia is a safe product is borne out by the fact that our bodies produce 4200 mg per day. It is a natural component, one that is expected and accepted to render good effects in our bodies and is essential to life. Ammonia is made up of Nitrogen and Hydrogen. It is the fighter against organisms like E. Coli that has a powerful ability to spread disease when it ends up in spinach, strawberries and lettuce. The US Department of Agriculture declares this meat is nutritious and safe to eat, meeting food safety standards.
Have I convinced anyone but myself? Should we go back and rename this component of hamburger as "lean finely textured beef"? Many schools have discontinued their use of "lean, finely textured beef" with all its benefits due to opposition by parents and others who are actively on the emotional bandwagon.
There are a number of large supermarket firms mainly located in the east that are phasing out their requirements for "lean, finely textured beef:", fast food corporations and food markets. This all came about because of customer hysteria not science or logic or good sense. The social media, of course, have been deeply involved in proliferating information that could be detrimental to our pocketbooks and our diets And on the other hand if the meat companies had made this beef process a widely known piece of information, would people have been so surprised, acting fast and furious to emphasize pink slime, and feeling justified by the sensationalism it stirred up?
Margaret Heaps is a native born Californian who sees life as not long enough to fit everything in. She has grass roots in Petaluma, California and Nicasio, California, where her great grandfather bought land from gold that he mined in the Gold Rush of 1848 and created a high yield dairy farm. With this background legacy, she married and raised six boys, went back to school and became a registered nurse; this was her profession for many years. Now that she has retired, her energy level still high, she has undertaken to build and market a new website:
