Meat Your Maker
Y’know how there’s those food facts people gleefully let loose… things you really didn’t want to know? I’m not talking about bullshit like KFC serving rabbit, but queasy facts that put you off your dinner quicker than Channel 10’s bright idea for Monday-to-Friday primetime viewing (an Australian version of The Biggest Loser? Five nights a week? Do I really need daily updates on what flabby, wobbly, sweating, grunting hefty folk have been doing all day while I tuck into my meat and veg?)
Adam does a lot of advertising work for a Major National Supermarket. Part of his job is creating those gleaming, shiny, slightly scary “food porn” ads in the newspaper. He was chatting to someone responsible for managing the supermarket chain’s butchers department, who was explaining part of the meat preperation which occurs in every store.
Namely, THE MEAT IS SPRAYED RED TO MAKE IT LOOK TASTIER.
Now, I really didn’t need to know this little cutlet of a fact. Vaguely disgusted but still suspicious, I cut into a defrosted steak we’d bought this week, and what do you know? There’s an eerie, scary, layer of flourescent red on the outside layer of the meat. Which makes sense - meat is grey! I understand the reasoning behind the move, who wants to buy grey-looking meat after all, but red spray? Holy crap. I feel like I need to obsessive-compusively wash and scrape off the spray before I cook everything now.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, after recounting the revelation to my mate Julian, he turned in surprise. “How could you not know that, don’t you read the internet?”
“I’m sticking to chicken,” I assured him.
“Oh, supermarkets bleach chicken,” he corrected me. And I’m sure they do. God knows what they do to mince, do they freaking let it mellow out in a bucket of paint for a day?
Can’t trust the freaking deli. I’m off to eat Saladas for tea. :(
January 12th, 2006 at 1:06 am
Bleach the chicken? Thats just plain old racism… If you want to really be grossed out… at least in the states you should read the allowances the gov’t has for food… like the amount of rat dropping allowed in flour …. nasty stuff… had a college biology profess who loved to drop these kinds of facts on us… the ironic part is she probably weighed in at 350 lbs.
January 12th, 2006 at 3:14 am
Heh. Now that you’re shocked by that get a copy of The Corporation and watch the bits about Milk and Cows.. It’ll fucking gross you out majorly
Basically, the cows udders get infected and they just milk them anyway and it goes into your milk…
January 12th, 2006 at 3:53 am
I like this new paranoid Jeb. I too go through stages where everything in the supermarket seems like poison, and un-hygenic poison at that. The worst thing about meat are the gel pads they put in supermarket meat packs, especially chicken. They always burst and leak their bead-y gel all over the meat. A butcher mate told me it’s non-toxic, but I just don’t think so.
January 12th, 2006 at 11:58 am
I haven’t eaten anything bought at Coles since I worked there and half a rat was found in the cake mix. Management was all “It’s okay, we scraped it out” but I want to know where was the other fucking half?
January 12th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Gawd …. I’m glad I’m a vegan!
January 12th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Are you also paranoid about Trans-Fatty acids, which are in just about all processed foods, which clog fine blood vessels in the body, especially the eyes, leading to blindness?
January 12th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Well, I’m half-blind already, so I’ve kinda got blind karma owed to me.
January 17th, 2006 at 5:54 am
As far as I can tell, they don’t do this in America. Which I’m a bit surprised about, to tell the truth.