I am sure that if you are a human living in the United States who ever turns on the television, reads a newspaper, or otherwise interacts with the media and/or other humans, you have heard about the pink slime scandal.  If you haven’t, here’s a link…http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57393719-10391704/report-usda-school-lunch-meat-contains-pink-slime/.  The short story is about something that the USDA and the beef industry call “lean beef trimmings”.  It’s a by-product of the beef-processing, well, process that includes fat, scraps shaved off the bone, etc., etc. and cleaned with ammonia-that’s right-and mixed into ground beef.  It used to be used for pet food….but somehow not it’s fit to be included in ground beef that you purchase at the grocery store and that is used to feed school children.

Now, this post is not about pink slime per se.  The whole thought of it is repulsive to me, and I am glad that this story made a splash.  Apparently it has affected some meat sales and the processors themselves are beginning to question their inclusion of this foulness in their beef…it’s bad for the bottom line.  Still, if you want to buy it, if you don’t have a problem with it, that’s your prerogative.  But….isn’t it my prerogative to not buy it if I don’t want to?

Unfortunately, that’s a complicated matter.  Grocery stores can opt out of selling it, and schools can opt out of serving it.  However, if your grocery store is not one of the, um, “out-opters”, you have no way of knowing whether the ground beef you are picking up contains “pink slime” or not.  The USDA does not label it, and they say that they will not label it.  Perhaps if the movement continues they will be persuaded to change their minds, but for the moment, if you are buying ground beef at your local grocery, you might be buying the aforementioned by-product.  And you don’t know it.

The same goes for genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.  GMOs are genetically altered in a laboratory, and at the moment, food processors are not required to label their products to tell consumers that their products contain GMOs.  Chances are that if you are buying food in a box that is not organic, it contains GMOs.  Food companies and their scientists like to argue that there is nothing wrong with the modification of organisms and it is just like Mendel crossing two different pea plants.  Sorry….not the same (I’m not going to go into detail about the whys and why nots, but it’s not), and since genetic modification is pretty new science, there is no research about what the long-term effects of GMOs are.  I have no scientific basis for this, but I would not be surprised to discover that GMOs are in some way linked to the surging food allergies these days.  I just prefer to eat my food unadulterated, the way it was intended.  If you don’t mind GMOs, then you have a right to buy them.  But if I don’t want them in my food, should it not be my choice to not eat them?  Apparently the government doesn’t think so.

I do a lot of reading about food and food politics.  Hey, if you want to eat a steady diet of Red 40 and high fructose corn syrup, that’s your right.  It’s your choice.  I still eat junk food from time to time, but I generally try to avoid those ingredients.  Of course, I can read the label and see if those ingredients are in food that I am buying.  But if I want to shop at the regular grocery store that’s five minutes from my house, I can’t buy ground beef without wondering if it contains pink slime.  I can’t buy a bag of tortilla chips without wondering if it contains GMOs.  Shouldn’t it be my choice to buy these things without wondering what mystery ingredients are lurking in there?  A lot of people feel like it’s a violation of their rights and “big government” for the government to label what you eat.  A violation of your rights?  They aren’t telling you what to eat.  They’re only telling you what’s in it.  I’d like to know.  Sorry, I’m not a “big government” person, but corporations have a lot more power than the average American, and industry does need to be regulated in a way that keeps people safe and informed about the food supply.

So, until something changes, I won’t be purchasing ground beef at the grocery store….I’ll be buying whole cuts of meat and grinding them myself (I’ve been doing that for a while anyway).  I am still working on my local buying habits but I’m definitely going to work toward buying as many local and/or organic (currently anything labeled organic cannot contain GMOs-although many of the corporations owning organic brands would like to change this) products as possible.  I’ll continue to buy as few packaged foods as possible.  And I’ll continue to support your right to eat whatever you want.  After all, it’s your choice!

Updated 4/2/12

I read this article yesterday and found it very interesting. http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/publishers-platform-blue-barf-green-goop-purple-puke-red-rubbish-or-yellow-yuck/#.T3hdsELws18.twitter

I found this excerpt most interesting: “Do not shoot the messenger. Blaming what is now happening on the media or the moms who are concerned about their kids health never works. Had you not built the foundation of your business in part by deciding the public did not need to know something – even something that you believed was good for them – the explosion of negativism you are now experiencing would have been a passing storm instead of a hurricane.” Good point. I understand what you are saying about the inflammatory actions/statements of the media, but how many people had no idea that they were purchasing this? The producers were certainly not forthcoming with the info.

Perhaps what I should have said is this: I do not want to eat “lean finely textured beef”. I realize that I am much more aware of what I eat than the average American, but the truth is that many people think that what they are purchasing when they buy ground beef is just that: a whole cut of beef that has been run through a grinder. What reason would they have to think anything else? Some people will continue to buy unlabeled ground beef regardless of the “pink slime” media blitz. Many people don’t want to eat it, and the whole point of my post was to assert that if you don’t want to eat it, you shouldn’t have to….so, knowing it’s present is the first step to making that choice.

Another issue I forgot to mention was the growing debate over raw milk. While large beef producers are allowed to sell us meat we wouldn’t want to eat if we knew what was really in it, raw milk is illegal in many states and most states do not allow raw milk to be purchased in another state and brought over state lines. The CDC website reports that raw milk is dangerous and resulted in 2 deaths between 1998 and 2009. Huh?  They estimate that deaths from E. Coli 0157 average about 20 per year.  E. coli 0157 is largely a byproduct of poor, unhygenic meat industry practices.  Yep.  Poop in the meat (from removing the intestines).  Pleasant, I know….but anyway.  I can buy ground beef at any grocery store, but the government says raw milk is too dangerous and I can’t buy it.  Someone please explain this to me!  Where’s my choice?  Anyway…..

Food, that it.  Pure, unadulterated food.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately (well, increasingly more and more over the past several years) about the processing that the food we eat goes through before it lands on our plates.  I’m not talking about the cooking that we do at home, or any of the preservation measures that can also (at least theoretically) be taken at home, like canning, curing, pickling, drying, or freezing.  I’m talking about processing that can only take place in a factory, or worse yet, a laboratory.  Did you know that if you buy non-organic food in a bag or a box, there’s a very good chance that you are going to eat genetically-modified food (GMOs)?  That is, some ingredient has had some genetic feature of some other plant or animal “inserted” in its genetic makeup to add some “desirable” feature.  That to me is just weird, and a little scary.  I’m sure many of you have heard the term “Franken-food.”  Gross.

Now, I’m not going to lie.  I still buy some foods in packages.  I love Doritos so much that I can’t buy them, because they are probably my only “trigger food”.  I can eat them till I’m sick.  It’s not pretty.  Still, over the last five or six years I have bought fewer and fewer packaged items, mostly crackers and cereal, because I have yet to find a recipe to make cereal at home (besides oatmeal, or course, or this yummy but fairly expensive granola recipe) and have not yet found a perfect recipe for crackers.  But I digress….

My point is this: we as a society are obsessed with weight and image, and we think that we are obsessed with healthy foods, in the form of nonfat yogurt and mayonnaise and chips (have you had nonfat chips? They wreak havoc on my stomach. It’s ugly).  I can’t help but make the obvious-and oft overstated-point that this is a paradox indeed, since on average we are far heavier than our ancestors who didn’t have access to fat-free cheese, and if you go back far enough, bought their staples at the general store, not the chain grocery, and got the rest from their back yard or from other local producers.  Now, I am sure that someone will point out to me that our life expectancy is far longer than that of our thinner ancestors, and no, I don’t have an answer for that, besides the fact that we now understand germ theories (therefore doctors now wash their hands between patients) and most of us have access to much better health care than our forefathers.  I haven’t done a lot of scientific research on this subject (but I’m working on it-the problem is that it is difficult to find unbiased, refereed sources on either side of the equation!) but I do know that our the occurrence of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are higher than they used to be and I can’t help but wonder how much of this can be linked to our “healthier” diets.

Additionally, we definitely aren’t thinner with all of our lowfat and nonfat foods than our ancestors who ate butter (not margarine or “buttery spread”) and red meat and exercised by working in their yards and gardens and on their farms and doing their manual labor jobs.  So, let me pose a question: why do we think that we are smarter than God and we can make food better than it comes to us in its natural state?  How is it that we can possibly think that when we add chemicals or icky additives to our food as a substitute for the flavor that we subtract when we remove the fat from it that we are making the food better?  How, how, how?

No, not every meal that I eat is laden with butter and red meat and whole milk.  We eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains…all the things that we’re “supposed” to eat. But I don’t get in too much of a twist over eating things that modern wisdom says are bad for us.  It’s all about balance for us…and also about not eating too much of anything.

I was a bit hesitant about writing this post.  I don’t want to come across as judgmental, or as trying to make anyone feel guilty about the foods that they eat.  I’m not.  I just want to make you think, as I have been made to think, about the sources of the foods you eat and if maybe there are things that you haven’t realized about the food that you’ve been eating.