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That's the process. Bits of meat with ammonia going around in circles.
by wolco 8y ago
That's the process. Bits of meat with ammonia going around in circles.
- sp332 8y agoNo. They spray a mist of ammonia over the meat to disinfect it. It's not an ingredient.
- chii 8y agoBut does the end product contain ammonia? If it does, then it's an ingredient.
- sjwright 8y agoIf you let your steak dry before cooking, do you list the airborne dust and bacteria as ingredients?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoThe whole issue here isn’t the outside of the meat. The outside is supposed to have bacteria, and be cooked off. It’s that re-shaped meat is done with meat product that is made up of a lot of outside surface (the part that has all the bacteria) now being smashed to the inside of the product where it won’t get hot enough to kill. The inside of beef is quite clean, that’s why it’s safe to eat rare. The inside of reshaped meat isn’t safe to eat rare. But consumers don’t know the difference.
- wutbrodo 8y agoI'd be very surprised at someone knowing that beef doesn't need to be cooked internally to as high a temperature _without_ knowing that this isn't true of ground beef. I'm not much of a cook, and have even less exposure to Western cooking, and that's one of the basics you come across when you first started handling meat.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoYes, I agree it’s common knowledge that steak and burger have different cooking requirements. The issue is if you THINK you have a nice solid real steak with clean insides, but ACTUALLY have a few steak pieces glued together with ground meat purée. You can’t tell by looking at it. Probably doesn’t taste any different. And the customer is never informed.
- wutbrodo 8y agoI might have misunderstood what we were talking about here: I thought the context was ground beef. I agree that I probably wouldn't assume that my steak wasn't reconstituted.
- sp332 8y agoIsn't that problem shared by all ground beef?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoYou aren’t supposed to eat ground beef rare. Steaks you can. If you don’t know your steak is partially ground beef, that’s the issue.
- chii 8y agoisn't burger patties usually eaten medium rare?
- KAMSPioneer 8y agoThey shouldn't be. The USDA FSIS recommends cooking ground products (including LFTB) to an internal temperature of 160F. Eating ground or reshaped meats without cooking to proper internal temperatures can be dangerous. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/safe-minimum-internal-temperature-chart/ct_index https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety...
- sp332 8y agoI think I'm missing what you're worried about. The article says that pink slime can be called "ground beef", not that it can be called steak.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoYou are skipping over the end effect. If you think you are buying a steak, but are really buying a steak bits + “ground beef” glue, that’s the problem. IMO, calling it ground beef is very misleading unless you are farmiliar with the processes used.
- KAMSPioneer 8y ago
- cc439 8y agoLiterally every foodstuff will be exposed to bleach and or ammonia due to the washdown procedure in every food processing plant. It may not be present in the same quantities as a product directly treated by such disinfectants but it's still there.
- wolco 8y agoNo not at all. A handful of companies in a few products use ammonia. Cheese, chocolate and baked goods. For baked goods they claim it evaporates. Cheap cheeses use it to speed up growth. Some foods breakdown into ammonia so our bodies can handle it but constant higher levels can cause illness as it overwhelms the body.
- nate_meurer 8y agoSome foods? You mean, like, literally all digestible proteins? > but constant higher levels can cause illness as it overwhelms the body. Note that this has nothing to do with the tiny residual levels of ammonia in bread, cheese (both cheap and expensive), and meat products of all kinds. Your body produces and excretes an order of magnitude more ammonia than what you eat directly from food, and will easily do far more than that if you're athletic or eat a lot of extra protein.
- wolco 8y agoThe bacteria in your body produce waste ammonia, hydrogen, methaine. Your body using the detoxication channels available to remove them. If the body is unable to you get sick. Throwing in more ammonia will cause more stress on these pathways. Bodies can only handle so much we try to counteract these with things to detoxify like rest, exercise, other foods, etc. Eat pink slime through your 20s might be okay the older you get the less your body will be able to handle pink slime for breakfast.
- nate_meurer 8y agoI don't mean to insult you, so let me apologize if this sounds mean, but I can tell you're completely unfamiliar with basic human physiology. What you're saying makes no sense. Ammonia is your body's way of getting rid of nitrogen, which comes from dietary protein. In general, an adult's body must dispose of as much nitrogen as they consume. This makes sense if you think about it, because humans don't grow forever. You may gain or lose lean mass for periods of time, but in general, nitrogen excretion equals nitrogen intake. The more protein you eat, the more ammonia your body makes, and your body is designed to efficiently process and eliminate large amounts of ammonia, mostly via conversion to urea and renal filtering. So think about this logically for a moment. Think about how much protein you eat every day. In effect, all of the nitrogen in that protein (an equal amount of nitrogen, rather) is converted to ammonia inside your body. You'll see exactly how much whenever you have your blood tested, in your UUN (Urine Urea Nitrogen) number. My last UUN was about 20 g/day. Healthy athletes commonly excrete up to 40 or 50 grams of nitrogen per day, which means their bodies can safely produce upward of 50 grams of ammonia every day (molar mass ratio of nitrogen to ammonia is about 0.82). This is perfectly normal and sustainable for your entire life. Renal efficiency declines slowly after middle age, but reasonably high-protein diets are harmless and in many ways beneficial even for elderly people. Does this make sense? You're worried about eating, say, a hundred milligrams of extra ammonia in your food, while your body is naturally and safely producing hundreds of times more than that every day. Do you see how silly that sounds? EDIT: As I pointed out in another comment, I'm a vegetarian, and I reflexively consider LFTB to be approximately equivalent to roadkill. I think there are legitimate risks in mislabeling LFTB, but the trace ammonia content is not one of them.
- zdragnar 8y agoEver eat bean sprouts? Those are sanitized with ammonia or bleach. They need moist, warm environments to sprout, and are a breeding ground for listeria.