What pH is your meat?

Do you know what is in your meat? Ammonia. Yes a wonderful cleaning product used to treat windows, is also used to treat our meat.

Beginning in the 90’s Beef Product’s(a company) began trying to make a way to make the fatty by- products into usable meat. To reach this goal, the fat is liquefied and then the protein is extracted, and then reconstituted which than creates a lean meat used mostly for hamburgers. This became known in the industry as “pink slime”. (So, they are saying that McDonald’s hamburgers are reconstituted beef product that was once the leftovers of other meats. Yup!) Than there is the issue that this new leaner meat is more prone to being infected with E.coli and salmonella, which came the need to clean the meat. A method of using ammonia as a processing agent was introduced to kill these bacteria and because it is used to process the food, it does not need to be included on the labels of these products. There is a pH of 9.05% of ammonia in this new meat.

Many school systems use this reconstituted meat because it saves them 0.03 a pound.  Yet, they are unaware of the ammonia aspect until it is too late. The meat has been shown to have enough leftover ammonia that it actually sickens the children. In 2008, these companies began to find ways to lower the pH balance to 7.75-8.5% in an effort to combat the smell.

The companies are only using a smaller pH balance to get rid of the smell? Not to protect the children or those who also eat this meat? The meat company’s bottom line is the almighty dollar, which annually is about 440 million. Ammonia is being introduced to our bodies at a young age, how are we going to know the lasting effects of ammonia in the way we grow or absorb nutrients. When we send our children to school, we should not be worried about what the school s are serving.  With the outbreaks of salmonella and E.coli, there is has to be a happy medium that won’t make people sick and what is used to “clean” the meat. However, I don’t there will ever be a better alternative as long as these companies make such a huge profit.  Sad but true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

If it looks like a fish and swims like a fish...it could be chicken?

So say you are part of this wonderful planet called Earth, which I hoping you all are, if not, there may be a few Area 51 stops for you.  Now, being part of this wonderful planet, you realize that there are more people to feed every year and it takes time to grow things, from plants to animals. So what do we do? Go hungry? Not likely in the world of convenience and an on the go attitude. Instead we look to the scientists. Here they have found a way to genetically alter animals to rush the growth process to make animals bigger, more appealing, and able to feed people quicker. (sound almost like a superhero, SUPER FOOD)

However, in the light of recent media coverage about genetically altered salmon, this process of creating "Super Food" has come under fire.  We are finding that scientists (not farmers) are producing our food. These scientists are in a lab genetically combining the genes of two species to hurry up the evolution process. By doing so, we are creating animals that can no longer procreate (ie the turkey with such large breasts that they have lost the ability to have sex) to satisfy our desire for a certain meat.  Even when trying to keep the unmodified and the modified apart isn’t working. Thousands upon thousands of fish escape each year, spawning with “natural fish”. So we don’t even know what we are eating if we catch it ourselves.

 We are crossing animals and plants that would never come in contact with one another to make a super group that can feed many. Now we can ponder what these Super Foods are doing to our bodies. Already the insects that feed off of the mutated crops are beginning to change…evolution is happening (but on steroids) all around us. We are all changing all the time, but how will our grandchildren look/behave after being fed a constant diet of mutated food? And how far will scientists go to make a more desirable product? No longer are we looking to farmers, but to scientists and companies to keep us safe. Not a very good idea in my opinion, as they are looking for a profit increase while ignoring increasing waistlines. I feel that as consumers, we should be more aware of what we are putting into our bodies, be more aware of what we are doing to our bodies just by eating.

Reference: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=11701456
(notice the story is under technology, not food, diet, or news of the strange? yes, I find it very telling.)