Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Pink Slime. What's your take?

I hope you've heard of it by now. Pink Slime.  Ugh, my stomach shudders even at the words.

The story broke in The Daily, a news app for the iPad.  I read it at the gym, and immediately wished I hadn't eaten a hamburger the day before (not just the fat content... but what if I digested THAT?).  The country is in an uproar about what is in the meat we buy, and with good reason.  For how long have the meat packaging companies been filling our their products and beefing up weight/price with chemicals and parts of the cattle we never want to digest?

The information is enough to make a vegetarian diet tempting to anyone.  The story broke about ground beef, but who is to say other meat packing companies do not do similar things?  We thought the USDA was in place to protect us, but they ruled that the pink slime process was legitimate and should not even be placed on labels.  This brings us to question, how much do we really know about where or how our food is produced?  The story is an eye opener to many people who are not mindful of food origins.

The outing of "pink slime" is just the beginning.  The movement in this country to be more mindful of our eating habits is strong enough to do more research, and it frightens me what might come up.  I've thought about taking meat out of my diet for awhile, and more research like this might actually motivate me to do it.

What do you think, is the pink slime a big deal?  Did it change your shopping plans for the week?