Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 04:23 Posted by Home Cure Wednesday, 22 February 2012 04:23

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Like Fast Food? Then You’re Eating Pink Slime!

For a long time, you were eating pink slime. Yes, you were if you spent time in fast food restaurants. The pink slime, ammonium hydroxide, is used to turn meat of inferior quality that is usually processed for dog food into yummy cheeseburgers. Don’t shake your head and try to ignore that McDonald’s burger wrapper that is next to you…

McDonald’s confirmed that it has eliminated the use of ammonium hydroxide — an ingredient found in fertilizers, household cleaners and in homemade explosives — from its hamburger meat. How exciting!

Although McDonald’s acknowledged that it stopped using the unappetizing pink goo — made from treating otherwise inedible scrap meat with the chemical – the company denied that the decision was influenced by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s campaign to get ammonium-hydroxide-treated meats like chicken and beef out of the U.S. food supply.

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.”

The use of treated scrap meat “to me as a chef and a food lover is shocking,” Oliver said. “… Basically we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it ‘fit’ for humans.”

Sarah Prochaska, a registered dietitian at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said that ammonium hydroxide is widely used in the U.S. food industry but that consumers may not be able to find out what products include it because the USDA considers it a component in a production procedure and not an ingredient that must be listed on food labels.

While the government considers it safe, it certainly “does not look anything like ground beef,” she said. And since it’s not on nutrition labels, the only way to avoid it “would be to choose fresher products, cook your meat at home, cook more meals at home.”

 

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