Is anyone else on the verge of giving up ground beef due to pink slime?

[apples and oranges]

I love hamburgers, but lately the thought of buying and eating ground beef disgusts the hell out of me. Does anyone know if organic beef has pink slime too?

[Snake Alchemist]

1. What about hotdogs in general?

Amazes me how many people will eat "dirty water" hot dogs from street vendors in NYC.

[sylvi]

36. Hot dogs

Hot dogs, bologna and Vienna sausages are pretty much 100% pink slime, aren't they?

[madokie]

2. Me, my wife

I doubt the local butcher shops use pink slime. I'd about bet the ones around here don't

[southernyankeebelle]

3. No I still love beef and especially hamburgers. I don't know if your live near a rural area but you

might check out if you can buy a half a cow at a slaughter house. They will pack it the way you want. Check google for the nearest place. If it didn't bother you before then don't worry about it. Obviously your still alive right? LOL

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Know your provider.

Last time I went to our local meat market (supplied by local farmers who raise beef on grass), I jokingly asked about the pink slime & the guy behind the counter said something like, "Damn. We forgot to put it in this batch."

[Brickbat]

5. Nope, my grocery store grinds its own.

[Lasher]

6. I'm not.

But if you think hamburger ingredients are repulsive, maybe you should switch to other meats like hot dogs, bologna, and sausage.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

7. I've given up red meat for health reasons.

On few occasions, we will get one at Freddy's Frozen Custard.
But we've been getting ground turkey.

[Joe the Revelator]

21. What do you think is in ground turkey??

Ground meat in general is the 'problem'.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

31. I don't think what I buy actually has pink slime in it.

The research we did didn't bring anything up?

[Joe the Revelator]

37. No, probably not 'pink slime', but yellow beaks, orange turkey feet, white turkey eye balls....

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. I haven't given it up, because my local butcher grinds his own.

Of course it costs more, but I know where it comes from. And they grind it every day.

[Drale]

9. I don't really eat that much ground beef

sure a hamburger every now and again, but in my family we have a saying. If your going to eat, eat well. Because my mom's mother always bought the cheapest meat possible, she makes a point to buy good meat even though it costs more. In my family, eating well would be the last thing we gave up if it came to that. We would be living in a shack eating steak. lol

[hobbit709]

10. My local store grinds their own daily from 100% natural grass fed beef.

costs about 20% more than the local chain garbage but tastes about 500% better.

[teddy51]

11. I now shop Costco exclusively for my ground beef. It tastes much better than my previous purchases

at either Fred Meyer or Safeway.

[crazylikafox]

40. Costco also carries organic ground beef. I've been buying that for the past few years.

[JDPriestly]

12. I last bought a hamburger close to ten years ago.

It made me sick, and I haven't bought any since.

I buy an appropriate piece of meat and have it ground if that is what i need. I will not buy the prepared stuff.

[frazzled]

13. Why would you have to give up ground beef?

I haven't bought ground beef from a pink-slime-type supermarket in more than 30 years. I don't buy any meat that comes prepackaged. If there's no butcher there from whom I can select the exact piece I want, who can cut something for me, I don't buy it. You can buy totally unadulterated ground beef at specialty markets (yes, like Whole Foods: they've even ground fresh sirloin for me on request), butcher shops, or for the best results, grind your own from cuts of your choice.

[killbotfactory]

14. Avoid the cheap stuff from large industrial producers like cargill and ibp.

If you want pink slime free beef ask the people behind the butcher counter if they use it.

Organic beef, local beef, and/or in-house ground beef from a natural market will not have pink slime in it.

[Marrah_G]

15. I buy mine local

I pay more but offset it by using less. Same with milk, cream and eggs. I went organic and/or local and we just changed how we use it. We make our own butter and mayo from the cream and eggs.

[backscatter712]

16. Doesn't pink slime only go into the el-cheapo tube-packaged meat?

I was under the impression that the higher-quality stuff didn't have it.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

17. Buy a grinder... grind your own meat. Problem solved.

[Daniel537]

18. Nope. n/t

[HappyMe]

19. No.

The store grinds their own.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

20. Wanna give up steaks too? Google "MEAT GLUE"...

It's a way to take leftover scraps and pieces of good cuts of meat and conglomerate them into "prime" cuts of meat. Instead of throwing away the scraps as waste they can now sell them at a premium price. Makes the marbling look real nice too. Basically it's an enzyme sprinkled on the meat pieces, the food wrapped into whatever shape they want the steak/meat to be, and the enzyme repairs/glues/heals the flesh of the meat back together. Think of it like building a nice cut of steak from little steak building blocks.

Of course the danger is now cooking a meat-glued steak anything less than completely done for the same reason as ground meat. Some pieces of meat in the middle of that steak may have unkilled surface contamination - unlike a regular piece of steak where only the exterior surface might have contamination and cooking only the outside is sufficient. Eating meat-glued steak rare/medium is pretty much a no no. Of course, they say that cooking the steak kills the enzyme and makes it safe to eat as well.

Problem is there's pretty much NO way to tell if you have a meat-glued cut of steak or authentic cut of steak. Even butchers cannot tell the difference side by side before or after the meat is cooked. The biggest portion of meat glued steaks ends up in restaraunts - it's usuall y cheaper than average for the cuts of meat. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if bargain brand supermarket meats use meat-glue as well.

MMMmmmm

[doc03]

22. I rarely eat beef anyway n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Well yesterday with my lovely gluten allergy

It was burger, no bun, at a restaurant.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

24. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

The sad fact about me is the fact that a certain food tastes good to me will trump the issues as how it got to the plate. And I don't know if I can ever change that.

And if there is anything I love, it's a good hamburger. And I'm sure at least some of those good hamburgers in the past have contained the infamous pink slime, yet I enjoyed them all the same.

[Arugula Latte]

25. I haven't eaten that stuff for decades.

It grossed me out as a teen and it still does, 30 years later.

[GoCubsGo]

26. I pretty much gave it up a long time ago.

I try to limit myself to non-factory-farmed, organic meats. I can't afford them, except when they're on a super-duper markdown.

[progressoid]

27. Nope.

Not because of pink slime. But because I can't afford it.

[Hatchling]

29. I know!

Do you remember when hamburger was the cheap meat? It's between $4 and $5 dollars for a lb now.

Now all I eat are chicken leg quarters @ .69 cents a lb. with an occasional splurge for beef liver @ $1.99.

[Odin2005]

28. I'd love to go Veggie but I like meat too much.

If I don't have meat for several days I start craving meat so much it's hard to think straight. No wonder many traditional societies have words for "meat hunger".

[Egalitarian Thug]

30. Too late, I haven't eaten hamburger or any processed meats in years.

I don't even feed that crap to my dogs. And here's the kicker, it doesn't cost hardly any more to eat real meat when you do eat meat.

You can have any meat ground at your local butcher shop.

[lector]

32. If you

Order chuck then have them grind it into hamburger It won't be an issue.

[Uncle Joe]

33. I'm not eating any kind of beef anymore until they stop using pink slime.

Thanks for the thread, apples and oranges.

[pansypoo53219]

34. go to a butcher. a kosher butcher even better.

i stopped going to the grocery for meat in the 80's i think. or by ground round.

[Throd]

35. Not even close.

[Javaman]

38. How about just not eating fast food...

or precooked dinners or meat from factory farms?

I get my meat from a local farmers market. The meat is grass fed. It costs more but that reflects that actual cost of meat produced by responcible ranchers.

Here's their website:

http://www.richardsonfarms.com/

[Iris]

39. No.

I think it's overhyped. I don't eat that much ground beef anyway.