I was reading the NaturalNews website the other day and saw an article that refers to the Pink Slime that I mentioned the other day.  http://www.naturalnews.com/035919_pink_slime_meat_glue_factory_food.html (opens in a new window).

In it, they talk about how consumers are driving the food manufacturing business.  If the consumers don’t like what’s in a product, they avoid it, or push back and the food processors change how they make their products.  At the end of the article, they suggest you can stay away from these additives by avoiding processed foods.

I disagree.  Scratch that, I heartily disagree.

Let’s start with pink slime.  Not the mechanically separated chicken or turkey that was associated with the picture originally, but the LFTB, BLBT.  Lean, Finely Textured Beef.  The one that are processed to remove the fat, then sprayed with Ammonia or Citric Acid.

There was no way to be sure you were staying away from this product.  If you bought a package of hamburger in the store, it might or might not have had this ingredient.  With consumer awareness, stores stopped selling anything with LFTB because consumers wouldn’t eat it.

The next one, transglutiminase enzyme, otherwise known as meat glue.  It’s difficult to know if you’re getting this.  It can be in any whole muscle item you get at the store.  It’s used to take smaller pieces of whole muscle meat, and glue them together to make bigger pieces of whole muscle meat.  Yuck.

So how can you tell if you’re getting this? About the only way I can think of is to get ground meat.  Oh wait, but the you would have chanced getting pink slime.  What a choice.

At this point, grocery stores have bowed to public pressure and gotten rid of LFTB.  One of the companies that made it went bankrupt.  The other closed at least 3 of their 4 factories. So you can buy ground beef without worrying about that.

If you get ground turkey, check the ingredient statement for mechanically separated turkey.  It has to be listed on the label, unlike LFTB.

It all come down to choosing the lesser of the evils.  Fish with mercury, poultry – unless you get poultry on the bone, you might wonder if it’s got transglutiminase enzyme, ditto for whole muscle beef or pork, or go vegetarian.

We won’t even talk about genetically modified soy.