NOW THEY EVEN DILUTE MEAT -- b y Jim Hightower
You probably aren't aware of it, but the big meat conglomerates are now
charging meat prices for water.
Up to 20 percent of the volume of your supermarket steak, pork chop, or
drumstick is most likely H2O, plus a nice dose of salt and chemicals. These
are being injected into the meats by industry, which even has a
tasty-sounding term for the rip-off: "deep marination."
Believe it or not, Cargill, Wal-Mart, and the other corporate purveyors of
these adulterated meats say they are doing it as a favor to you, asserting
that they are "flavoring" the meat! As a pork processor so insultingly put
it: "This way we make sure consumers have a pleasurable eating experience,
even if they do a poor job of cooking the meat."
Well, golly, first of all, meat is supposed to have its own flavor - what
happened to that? Second of all, there's nothing pleasurable about learning
that watered-down meat can cost more than... well, meat. Third of all, at a
time when America's doctors are calling on food processors to cut the salt
they've been adding to our meals, the "deep marination" process can
quadruple the amount of salt in poultry, beef, and pork.
Yes, says the industry, but, it's all up to the consumer, for we label the
product with such language as, "boneless chicken breast with up to 20
percent of flavoring solution of water, spices, sugar, and phosphates." But
"New York Times" investigator Marian Burros found that this labeling is
either in teensy type - or doesn't exist at all on the packages. Also,
noting that today's industrial meat doesn't have much taste to begin with,
Ms. Burros found the water-injected meats to be even more tasteless - unless
you count the salt.
Visit your supermarket manager and demand that your meat not be watered,
salted, and chemicalized. Better yet, seek out local markets or meat
producers who don't have any injection needles laying around... and offer a
real meat to you.
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