Pink Slime: It's What's for Dinner.

I can remember a time when "slime" was a cool thing on Nickelodean, ahhh the good ol' days. Today slime is back and bigger than ever in the news... only this time, it's pink. In the name of correctness, from here on out I will be referring to "pink slime" as lean finely textured beef (that is, after all, what the product was called before the media ran away with the more attention-grabbing designation).




So what is lean finely textured beef? Well, before you buy a steak or roast in the store, the fat around the edges is trimmed off. Rather than wasting these trimmings, technology allows processors to separate the fat from the muscle fibers that remain through heat and centrifusion. Those muscle fibers contain nutrients that are more useful to us in our food than in the waste-line at the processing plant.

Considering how important sustainability has become to our industry and consumers, this process should be praised, not detested! It saves those trimmings from being wasted. Would I want processors to grind all of that trimmed fat into my ground beef? Probably not, but that is why they separate the fat from the muscle fibers and use only what is nutritious to our bodies.

This is a perfect example of the power that the media has over an under-informed consumer. They slap a more alarming name on a product to get the attention of millions of people- once that is accomplished, they will present information in whatever way they see fit. Lean finely textured beef is not the villain that the media is making it out to be, but it is up to you to do the research, find the truth, and make your own informed decision.