Iâm slightly disappointed. Every few weeks I buy 120 pounds of raw chicken necks and run them through a meat grinder. They come out a slightly darker shade of pink (with some variations). I assumed the lack of goopiness in mine was because the grinder Iâm using is much smaller. And also thereâs a lot of bone and gristle in the necks. I throw away the occasional head that turns up.
Itâs actually a little disconcerting that the real McNugget mcmix is more beige than pink.
Beige vs pink. Not much difference.
Why does Gweneth Paltrow come to mind?
Iâve seen that photo used to depict âpink slime,â aka âlean finely textured beef.â In fact, if you search Google or Google Images for âpink slimeâ that photo will pop up.
Itâs great that youâre coming back to this, but I just wish once in a while BB editors would read the comments on their stories.
@frauenfelder could have known three years ago that this was an established fake if he had.
(And donât ask me why I remember every comment thread on every BB post ever postedâŚ)
EDIT: My bad, I misremembered and hadnât fully read my own link: Mark did read the thread. He just didnât understand why people were suggesting it was fake.
Man, those were perfectly good-looking chicken breasts before they tossed them in the grinder and stamped them into homogenized calorie-blobs. The pink slime story actually appealed to me because I thought they were making something remotely edible out of what would otherwise be wasted.
Even if it were true, Itâs oddly naive that people were so horrified that McNuggets used to be pink slime. I think they forget that both pink slime and all-natural organic farm-raised chicken breasts used to be twitching, bloody muscle from the guts of a shit-stained chicken. Laws & sausages, etc.
Not to worry! Here is a helpful list of products that (purportedly) contain mechanically separated chicken.
This video was totally worth it if for no other reason than to learn the official names of the Chicken McNugget shapes. And also as something to send out to all those people on my Facebook who re-post the âOMG McNuggets are made from pink slime you guys!â stories every few months.
The picture of the pink slime is real. It was pink slime from a meat production plant in China. McDonaldâs has even acknowledged it. It just wasnât from a specific production plant that McDonaldâs has used. No photo fakery was involved.
McDonalds switched from mechanically separated poultry to all white meat in 2003. People can thank all those annoying, noisy, filthy, hippy activists who kept pushing fast food corporations to be healthier for this.
These corporations do not make these changes out of the goodness of their personhood hearts. One can also thank activists for pushing the fast food industry and grocery corporations to finally start removing the âboneless lean beef trimmingsâ pink slime from their products.
In February 2012, fast food chains McDonaldâs, Taco Bell, and Burger King announced they would stop using BLBT in their food products. In March 2012, the grocery chains Kroger, Safeway, Supervalu, Bi-Lo, and Winn-Dixie announced they would stop buying BLBT products.
Thank the activists for staying on their asses all this time.
These same activists have been the victims of corporate spying in collusion with governmental sources. These same activists were infiltrated and attacked by industry all this time and maligned against with massive public relations campaigns. If you or people you know have a bad opinion, annoyance or distrust of these activists, itâs more than likely itâs because of the exposure to these vicious public relations campaigns.
Sources:
Corporate spying:
Corporate spying:
Burger With a Side of Spies:
Corporate spying:
Pink Slime:
Corporations increasingly spying on nonprofits:
Walmart Exec Leads Shadowy Smear Campaign Against Activists:
Mark did read the thread. He just didnât understand why people were suggesting it was fake.
Pink slime wasnât fake and itâs still in use today in many food products. We can thank people like @frauenfelder and activists whoâve helped to bring pink slime to national attention for it being increasingly removed from food products by industry.
What exactly is wrong with mechanically-recovered meat? Itâs still meat from the same carcass, and is surely less wasteful than just tossing it away. When I eat organic, pasture-raised chicken, I eat the dark meat, the skin, the offal and even bits of cartilage, stripping the bones pretty much clean - whether with my fingers or as part of making chicken soup. I would much prefer McDonalds did this too, than took the most boring part of the bird (the breast) and chucked away the carcass.
If you take chicken mechanically separated chicken, and mix it with carrageenins and other hydro colloids, shape it to a cubical form, flash freeze it in liquid nitrogen for storage, bread and fry it. Then you can serve it with beet foam and micro greens for 50bucks at a Molecular Gastronomy kitchen.
I think that not everybody is pleased with the idea of eating things like cartilage (though it donât bother me - when I eat chicken wings there is very little left on the bone). I also think that, in general, people donât think too much about what exactly theyâre eating, and where it came from, and being reminded of it tends to gross out some people.
Also, I believe the first time I saw an âOMG PINK SLIME!â post, the use of gaseous ammonia in the process of making it in order to kill bacteria caused a mass panic in people who donât understand how little actual ammonia ends up in the final product.
OK, so they use real chicken breast⌠but why do they bother if theyâre just going to turn it into something that looks and tastes as though it were made from ground up bones and beaks?
They may start with real food, but the end result is, like most corporate fast-food (including sit-down âfamilyâ restaurant chains), processed and homogenized to the point that the only thing getting you to the next bite is the unholy mix of fat, salt and sugar. Blech.
Iâm still sad they removed beef tallow oil used to make the fries. I think it was actually more healthy, a small order of fries you FELT full, and look at pictures of those decades; most people where thin before they removed âunhealthyâ things and substituted with healthy things that made you want to eat more.
Hereâs Julia Child on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF31qCrclC0
I would much prefer McDonalds did this too, than took the most boring part of the bird (the breast) and chucked away the carcass.
The pink slime story actually appealed to me because I thought they were making something remotely edible out of what would otherwise be wasted.
Meat is not thrown away and wasted because we donât use pink slime, etc. Unfortunately, thatâs just industry talking points thatâve been spread around by the media. The meat isnât wasted when we do away with pink slime, etc. - It just has less profitable uses for industry.
What exactly is wrong with mechanically-recovered meat?
It can be more apt to biohazard risks for one. In 2009, there were two back-to-back incidents of salmonella contamination which caused 52,000 pounds of BLBT to be recalled. As for its nutritional value, pink slime may fill you up, but you wonât get the same effect that you would from actual ground beef since pink slimeâs protein comes from connective tissue.
The risk of microbial growth increases with the use of high pressure production processes. Microbiological and chemical risks arise from the contamination of raw materials and from poor hygiene practices during meat processing. High pressure production processes increase the risk of microbial growth. These processes result in greater muscle fibre degradation and an associated release of nutrients which provide a favourable substrate for bacterial growth.
When I eat organic, pasture-raised chicken, I eat the dark meat, the skin, the offal and even bits of cartilage, stripping the bones pretty much clean
Eating your chicken âpretty much cleanâ to the bone is not the same process as BLBT, etc.
If you miss mechanically-recovered meat, thereâs still plenty of sources for it or you can make it yourself if youâre so inclined. Personally, Iâm happy to see it being removed from a lot of kidâs diets in the USA.
unholy mix of fat, salt and sugar
unholy profitable mix of fat, salt and sugar
My problem with this image is that the âPink Goopâ is in direct contact with what looks like a plain cardboard container. Thatâs not generally done in food production, it would be bagged in plastic or put into a stainless or HDPE hopper. And if it is mechanically separated chicken meat, why isnât the cardboard wet?
direct contact with what looks like a plain cardboard container ⌠why isnât the cardboard wet?
It was just an example of extra pink slime run-off from a machine. It wasnât faked, if thatâs what youâre implying. The lack of industry transparency and lobbying is the reason we donât have more pictures of it.
What about the part where it gets washed with ammonia and then reflavored with chicken flavor? Is that a fiction too???
