Amonia in Hamburger Fails to Eliminate Pathogens

[tim]

Hi,

We all know that many major grocery chains inject their meat with solution of salt, phosphorous and who knows what. It is worse than that! THEY ARE INJECTING AMMONIA INTO HAMBURGER selling it at fast food outlets and grocery chains.

The purpose was to use questionable meat trimmings and eliminate contaminates with ammonia. It appears the process does not work; yes, much of the beef is contaminated.

New York Times Article, "Company’s Record on Beef Treatment Questioned"

Tim

[nibor]

Much mention of school lunches... some things never change

[sandiasingh]

I read this too and shared it with my girlfriend who has a 4-year old. She is very careful about food but occasionally will let him have a burger at a fast food joint. Hopefully never again. This made me ill just reading about it.

We buy ground buffalo from WFM and are picky about eating out--only locally owned restaurants that use fresh/local when possible. But when we recently went to a new chef-owned restaurant in Santa Fe that has been all the buzz and my husband saw a Sysco truck unloading in the back, he said he won't go there again.

These food issues are completely unacceptable. It's becoming a part-time job just staying on top of it and preparing the safest, healthiest food we can at home.

[paulraphael]

Whoda thunk that making burgers with scraps previously only approved for use in dog food, injecting with amonia, and serving to school kids could turn out to be a bad idea??

[Lisa Shock]

We buy ground buffalo from WFM and are picky about eating out--only locally owned restaurants that use fresh/local when possible. But when we recently went to a new chef-owned restaurant in Santa Fe that has been all the buzz and my husband saw a Sysco truck unloading in the back, he said he won't go there again.

i wouldn't give up on the restaurant until you know what exactly they are buying from Sysco. It could be cleaning supplies, hair nets, paper napkins, spices, and brand-name ketchup for patrons who demand name-brand ketchup on everything.

[sandiasingh]

I know, Lisa, it could be pretty harmless stuff and this Santa Fe chef (who is very popular) promotes the use of local/sustainable, so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. What I find interesting is the psychology of relating Sysco with food in such a negative way. Not that I don't agree with my husband, but he really had a reaction he could not help, so what to do?

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about how every chef-owned restaurant now claims to use local & sustainable food and I'm getting to the point where I'm questioning it. Costco sells "organic" grass fed beef, but is it really? You almost have to come home and research the company on the label and who knows if the hype on their website is true?

I recently bought a package of baby bellas from WFM and the label said it had "added vitamin D." I don't want added vitamin D in my mushrooms thank you but when I tried to research it on their website (the store employees hadn't a clue) I found that they let them sit in the sunlight for a while before packaging so they naturally absorb vitamin D.

This is the kind of misleading labeling that ticks me off. I figure Whole Foods does more than anybody else except local farmers to provide safe food, but I'm sure there are a thousand products even there that aren't really what they claim to be.

It's a real job trying to live a normal life and stay on top of all the horrific food issues we have to deal with.

[agray]

Frightening stuff indeed. There was a similar article in October about a 22 year old woman who became paralyzed after eating ground beef contaminated with E. coli: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html. The single scariest part of this article is the description of where the hamburger she ate came from:

"confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria."

This enables them to cut the price by 25%. Essentially, cheap food is killing us.

Seems like the only way to really be sure is do it yourself or work to establish relationships with farmers, a good butcher, restaurants. Which is not a bad idea anyway. It takes a commitment, and costs more, but I think we'd all be better for it (this is my New Year's Resolution). I just picked up half a side of pork from a local farmer and listened to her talk about the pigs, how they'd lived on her small farm and how she had cried when she had dropped her four pigs off to be slaughtered and butchered just before Christmas. I actually know the name of the animal in my freezer now (Daisy).

I'm going to try hard to know as much as possible where our food comes from. We don't have a Whole Foods where I live, though there are a couple of small organic markets I'm going to go to more often. From the grocery store, I will avoid the deli and meat areas completely, as well as the frozen/processed food, and just get fruit and vegetables.

[sandiasingh]

Agray, I read that story about the young woman who became paralyzed--so sad. I received Iron Chef Michael Symon's new book, "Live to Cook" as a Christmas present. His recipes are terrific--especially for a native Midwesterner like me--and his commentary is funny and direct. Symon uses mostly local/sustainable products and says he has always been amazed at how much time people spend on researching a new car they want to buy but don't seem to give a hoot about what they're eating. Something is very screwed up in our culture.

It baffles me that people don't connect the dots between eating a diet of processed food and health. I am a total food snob and my friends know it and most of them are too, but I also have a ton of friends who don't have the same philosophy and you can see their eyes glaze over when you mention the words organic or non-processed. I was going to buy a bunch of DVD's of "Food Inc" for my friends and family for Christmas but decided against it. It's like quitting smoking-you have to come to that decision yourself. No one can lead you to it.

Hats off to Daisy!

[carlux]

It's really not that hard to grind your own meat - I have a Kenwood Kitchen machine for which I bought a grinder attachment so that I could make my own sausages. KitchenAid have a similar attachment, and of course there are manual grinders.

It helps that we still have proper butchers in France so that I can be sure of what I buy - each animal has full 'traceabilite' and the butcher displays the name of the local producer from whom he bought the animal. He also grinds meat for hamburger to order, so you see exactly what goes into it. I still like to do my own to get my own seasoning, fat content, etc. Well worth doing.