***Are You Eating Pink Slime?

________________________________________ Are you putting 'pink slime' in your body without knowing it? ________________________________________ ABC news did a story about ‘pink slime’—an additive that is in 70% of the meat in super markets. See: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/where-you-can-get-pink-slime-free-beef/#.T1uHlFpnjUo.email After an ABC News investigation detailing the use of a cheap meat filler, finely textured lean beef, commonly called pink slime, which is in 70 percent of the ground beef sold at supermarkets, J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, defended the practice as a way to safely use what otherwise would be wasted. “BLBT (Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings) is a sustainable product because it recovers lean meat that would otherwise be wasted,” he said in a statement. However, the substance, critics said, is more like gelatin than meat, and before Beef Products Inc. found a way to use it by disinfecting the trimmings with ammonia it was sold only to dog food or cooking oil suppliers. Boyle wants us to believe that ‘pink slime’ is healthy, because it’s used to extend the shelf life of beef by keeping it looking pink, even when it is going bad. Kit Foshee, who, until 2001, was a corporate quality assurance manager at BPI, the company that makes pink slime, contends the trimmings bear little resemblance to beef. “It kind of looks like Play-Doh,” he said. “It’s pink and frozen. It’s not what the typical person would consider meat.” Is this what you want to be eating? The low-grade trimmings come from the parts of the cow most susceptible to contamination, often close to the hide, which is highly exposed to fecal matter. But because of BPI’s treatment of the trimmings — simmering them on low heat, separating fat and tissue using a centrifuge and spraying them with ammonia gas to kill germs — the United States Department of Agriculture says it’s safe to eat. Do you want to be eating ammonia and parts of the cow close to fecal matter? Some markets sell meats with pink slime and others don’t. You might want to ask at your market, because pink slime does not have to appear on the label. The only way to be sure there is no pink slime is to buy organic meat. Meat labeled ‘organic’ has no pink slime. This is just one example of how the food industry gets away with selling food-like products that are presented as actual food. Fifty years ago, when I found out what the food industry was doing (and continues to do), I chose to change my eating habits and have eaten only organic since then. I hate the idea of the food industry passing off food-like products as actual food, and claiming that they have nutritional value when they are actually doing harm to your body. If you were to look at the labels of most packaged food and research the chemicals that you find there, you would discover how much harm is being done to your body by packaged food-like products. If you care about your health and the health of your loved ones, then it is imperative that you educate yourself regarding what foods create health and what food are harmful. If you don’t care about your health, then you might want to explore why not. Why do you think so little of yourself that you believe you don’t deserve excellent health? What are you using the non-food and food-like products to avoid feeling and dealing with in your life? What are you trying to control with food addictions? What are you afraid of if you start to take loving care of your body? I hope you begin to ask yourself some of these questions.