McDonald's drops use of gooey ammonia-based 'pink slime' in hamburger meat
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McDonald's confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide an ingredient in fertilizers, household cleaners and some roll-your-own explosives in its hamburger meat.
The company denied that its decision was influenced by a months-long campaign by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to get ammonium-hydroxide-treated meats like chicken and beef out of the U.S. food supply. But it acknowledged this week that it had stopped using the unappetizing pink goo made from treating otherwise inedible scrap meat with the chemical several months ago.
Besides being used as a household cleaner and in fertilizers, the compound releases flammable vapors, and with the addition of certain acids, it can be turned into ammonium nitrate, a common component in homemade bombs. It's also widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavener in bread and cake products. It's regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department, which classifies it as "generally recognized as safe."
McDonald's decision was first reported this week by the Daily Mail, a blaring British tabloid, which trumpeted it as a victory for fellow Brit Oliver against the monolithic U.S. food industry.
More and see the video at: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10282876-mcdonalds-drops-use-of-gooey-ammonia-based-pink-slime-in-hamburger-meat
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)RKP5637
(67,109 posts)Merlot
(9,696 posts)just look at the pictures...does that look like anything remotely resembling hamburger? And I ate PLENTY real hamburgers as a kid, so I do know what they look like.
Although I haven't had meat in almost 30 years, I am more opposed to the way animals are treated and the chemicals, drugs, and hormones they are filled with than I am actually opposed to eating meat. I decided that it was healthier not to eat meat.
Look at all the pink slime I've missed in the past 30 years!
klook
(12,155 posts)It's approved by the FDA for use in many foods, including eggnog, condensed milk, breakfast cereals (including rolled oats), vinegars, mustards, peanut butter, sports drinks, beer, pudding, etc.
Complete list here:
http://www.codexalimentarius.net/gsfaonline/additives/details.html?id=380
Good reason to eat non-processed, organic, locally produced foods whenever possible.
izquierdista
(11,689 posts)Like wheat, soybeans, turnips, and kumquats!
sendero
(28,552 posts)..... I eat plants. Animals eat all kinds of things I would not eat, but I will eat the animals. If you think you have some kind of point, you don't.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)that the ammonia binds together.
Plants need three things to grow ans survive...NPK...Nitrogen, Phosphors and Potash...
AlecBGreen
(3,874 posts)that is so not an accurate comparison. At all. In any way.
AlecBGreen
(3,874 posts)we feed horse shit to plants. Is it safe for us to eat too?
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)tabasco
(22,974 posts)NOW CHEMICAL SLIME FREE!
I'M LOVIN' IT!
tibbiit
(1,601 posts)This grossed me out so much that I quit eating beef at restaurants. I may have nightmares from seeing the picture again. I may never eat soft serve strawberry ice cream again either! lol
Really that's good for them to take that revolting mess out of their food!
Now I know what 100% beef means, not pink slime!
Exclamation point! lol sorry
tib
Scottybeamer70
(873 posts)if that wouldn't make ya a vegetarian, then I don't know what would.
"inedible scrap meat"...........yeah..........that's what I want for dinner!
OMG.......that is just gross.
TrogL
(32,822 posts)I think it's the same stuff they put in the strawberry shakes
christx30
(6,241 posts)strawberry shake, go to an actual ice cream shop. I like going to Marble Slab and getting sweet cream with strawberries. I drink that so fast I get an ice cream headache, but I am smiling the whole time.
SunSeeker
(51,563 posts)I remember reading a story about the pink slime they make chicken nuggets out of, and the picture looked just like that. Good grief, looks like the only thing I can eat at McDonalds is the apple pie...or is it in that too?
cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)aikanae
(202 posts)cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)Kablooie
(18,634 posts)joshcryer
(62,276 posts)Poor plebs.
gadjitfreek
(399 posts)It's ammonia. Pure and simple. What's with the fertilizer and explosives crap? It's AMMONIA. Ammonia water, to be precise, NH4OH. The hyperbole in this article is unnecessary. Did you know that your local supermarket hits the meat with carbon monoxide to increase the redness and make it look more appetizing? The second-to-last line about being used as an anti-microbial agent in meats and declared safe by the USAD was an afterthought in a highly biased article that uses scary language to push a point. Don't fall for it. You can play this game with pretty much any compound out there. Dihydrogen monoxide is used by the Navy to help them kill people. It is highly toxic in high enough concentrations and breathing in any amount is fatal. It is used in the manufacture of industrial equipment and has been used as an agent against protestors. It's frickin' WATER. H2O. Don't be so quick to believe hyperbole like this article. Anyone who eats at McDonald's is facing far worse health risks than a little ammonium hydroxide. When bagels are made, they are dipped into sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, also used to convert fat into soap before being boiled. Learn chemistry and overcome hyperbole.
Orrex
(63,213 posts)I have a friend who died of an overdose of hyperbole.
Rozlee
(2,529 posts)But, at higher levels than we're adapted to, they're deadly to life on earth. Just see what happens when we get too much UV radiation from the destruction of the ozone. We're living longer and longer lives in the industrialized countries, but I can't help comparing them to the lives of people I've seen who are long-lived in third world countries. I think the only reason we're living so long is because we're full of preservatives. Our health and quality of life as we age are terrible.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)PavePusher
(15,374 posts)into a good case of ignorancant moral hysteria.
It ruins the fun, you see...
Travelman
(708 posts)for actually dealing in some actual fact here. This "article" is absolutely off the rails.
Yes! Ban DHMO! Do you people know that a key ingredient in DHMO is used to make nuclear bombs?!?! ZOMG!! In fact, a major component of DHMO is so voiltile, it's responsible for the crash of the Hindenberg!!!!! This is dangerous stuff!!
Unfortunately, too many people will get suckered by almost anything presented in a freightening fashion.
Kolesar
(31,182 posts)The poor cattle had intestinal disease because they were fed starchy corn instead of grasses. They had evolved to eat grasses.
Hence, those poor critters walked around the feed lot knee-deep in each others' diseased feces.
Have it your way.
Found in Yonkers
(100 posts)That was the only good part!
fasttense
(17,301 posts)Even the ground beef you buy in those rolls at the grocery store don't have the taste of meat.
We are now buying beef from a local farmer. There is quite difference in taste and how hungry you feel after eating a real hamburger. I can barely finish a 1/4 pound hamburger from ground beef from our local farm. But those hamburgers from a fast food place still leave me hungry, yet too full to eat.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)There's still a lot more things happening in a McDonalds 'hamburger.'
GTurck
(826 posts)I did not know that stuff was in those burgers but frankly I stopped eating most McDonalds a long time ago. Their only decent product is their coffee but someday soon I suppose that will exposed as not what it seems to be.
LittleGirl
(8,287 posts)It took a British guy to get our meat supply cleaned up????
So glad I gave up McDonald's in the 80s. That's just ewwwwwwwwwwww.
TBF
(32,062 posts)fresh food and pick up a small toy for them. They are liking the new system.
Rozlee
(2,529 posts)is made from this rendered beef mixture, not just McDonalds and all fast food? I read in "Eat This, Not That," that most fast food joints, including McDonalds, buy this ammonia-based filler at a centralized beef distributor. So, Wendy's, Whataburger, Burger King and all the other chains are possibly also using the process. It's why I stopped eating at all fast food joints completely. But, if he's saying even store bought beef is treated this way, I may never eat another hamburger.
AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)When I was a kid McDonald's smelled like heaven. It was because they fried their fries in beef tallow.
Then a bunch of people decided beef tallow was bad for you. They demanded McDonald's get rid of the beef tallow. McDonald's still wanted to make fries and people still wanted to eat them. So the food scientists at McDonalds searched and decided 100% vegetable transfats were the ticket.
Smart move there.
Beef tallow - much more good cholesterol than bad. Transfat - liquid heart attack.
Yavin4
(35,441 posts)McD's will kill more Americans in a day than all Islamic terrorists will do in a century.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)IDemo
(16,926 posts)adigal
(7,581 posts)I think that every time I go past there, all those people eating so unhealthily. I gave it up a few years ago. Thank goodness. Now the smell makes me sick.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Mechanically separated beef has been banned since 2004, due to fears of mad cow disease.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)they had ceased using ammonium hydroxide-treated beef in their hamburgers.
So, they must have been putting it into their hamburgers before 2012.
Anyway, I'm sure if we read the regulations carefully there are exemptions to using mechanically separated beef.
Travelman
(708 posts)...but it wasn't over separated meat. Everyone should go read this post and stop to think for a minute rather than flying off the handle at something that sounds "scary" and "gross."
This stuff is used in all sorts of stuff, it's common, and it's not harmful. It is a mild base. Even if you've never eaten McDonald's or indeed any other food treated with this stuff in your life, you have ammonium hydroxide floating around in your bloodstream.
You've just been fear-mongered by MSNBC.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)The "pink slime" is mechanically separated meat. Pork and poultry are OK (or at least legal ), beef is not.
Ammonium hydroxide is a chemical used with pink slime AND real meat. It is sensationalistic to call it "the 'pink slime' chemical".
Politicub
(12,165 posts)reACTIONary
(5,770 posts)... big dish of pink soft-serve ice cream! Honest, that's what I thought!
Londoncalling
(66 posts)Our burgers are made from actual meat...So people point out we had Mad-Cow dieases but that is why the industry had to improve so people would buy beef. He also campaigned for raising the standards of how poultary and pigs are farmed too. I have been a big fan of Jamie Oliver since he started out as with The Naked Chef series. Many of his recipes are easy to use and user friendly for men that want to learn to cook. My own father has used his books which has drastically improved his cooking skills.
Some in UK give Jamie Oliver a hard time for daring to speak out and point out things like British school dinners were disgusting and helping to make our children obese. Also for being young and successful. It has been a huge fight for him because kids are used to diets of fat and sugar and their parents don't want to change their own bad diets so try to sabotage any introduction to healthy eating. In both the UK and the USA he is fighting against people that are hellbent on staying fat and unhealthy and passing it on to there kids. According to the message boards elsewhere they want to eat burgers made of pink slime.
He also does good things with his resturants. http://www.fifteen.net/
wordpix
(18,652 posts)I had my first taste of a McD's burger since I was a teenager (that was decades ago) recently and could not eat it or even put it in a spaghetti sauce. It tasted like NOTHING or maybe cardboard and now I know why.
GROSSS!!!!