Misleading title. What Jamie Oliver has done is note that McDonald burgers in the US are not fit for human consumption until they've been processed.
But he missed a much bigger scoop! The same is true of McDonald's burgers in every country! In fact, burgers from every chain aren't fit for human consumption without processing (at a minimum, cooking). Hell, without at least some processing, the burger would still be walking around going "moo" and emitting greenhouse gasses.
So the issue isn't "you can't eat it until it's been processed"; that's a given. The question is "what processing is okay", and in particular, "is using ammonium hydroxide safe". And according to the FDA, the UN, the WHO, and most EU countries, it is:
http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Quest...
And that seems to pretty much cover it. "The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which has allowed McDonald’s to use otherwise “inedible meat.”" True, but they also use cooking, which also allows the consumption of otherwise "inedible meat". Is cooking safe? Science says yes. Is ammonium hydroxide safe? Science, again, says yes.
Edit: Also, if we're going to go off of "it sounds scary, it must be bad", all burgers contains sodium chloride, and chlorine is a very toxic, dangerous gas! It will kill you if you breathe it! That's the real scandal! The truth is out there! Fight Big Chlorine!
In fact, burgers from every chain aren't fit for human consumption without processing (at a minimum, cooking)
Freshly butchered beef is safe to eat raw so long as the butcher used basic hygiene. People have been eating raw meat for ages. Look at any of the cuisines from Europe through the Levant. They all have traditional raw meat dishes with histories as old as agriculture. In general it's quite tasty, much the same was sushi is. Raw lamb however, I would say is a taste I've not acquired.
Anyhow, even if McD's patties are perfectly safe, there is still a point to be made about what we're trading away with factory processing vs more traditional labor intensive methods.
So this is something else I think has gone very wrong in the US. Good food doesn't have to be an expensive luxury. Tartar doesn't have to be high end. In fact, it's best as a quick cold lunch on hot summer days. It's just beef and onion with minimal prep. It should be cheap.
But he missed a much bigger scoop! The same is true of McDonald's burgers in every country! In fact, burgers from every chain aren't fit for human consumption without processing (at a minimum, cooking).
Ho ho ho.
Only he made a valid point, that they use the scrummiest parts they find, that would not be acceptable to pass hygiene tests or be served without chemical treatment, and you just made a not very good joke by taking the "unprocessed" thing out of very specific "processing" context he mentions.
So the issue isn't "you can't eat it until it's been processed"; that's a given. The question is "what processing is okay", and in particular, "is using ammonium hydroxide safe". And according to the FDA, the UN, the WHO, and most EU countries, it is
OK then, that settles it. Because state agencies are not known to have approved tons of carcinogenic and harmful chemicals for everyday food use because powerful interests lobby for their use in order to lower their costs...
I mean, it's not like cigarettes aren't also approved and allowed to be sold (without any warning and with "studies" proving them safe, 3-4 decades back).
Or like the FDA approves Coke and Pepsi, products that are known to contribute to obesity, diabetes and several other adverse effects, just because there is a multi-billion industry to be made out of them.
If I'm allowed to be cynical, that the FDA approves something, only tells us that it's not a poison with immmediate effects, nothing much more...
You have a kind of valid point. Scientific studies and the relevant regulatory agencies are not always correct. We can't always trust the scientific consensus (unless it's about global warming...but I digress).
...but you don't mention anything better. There's no "and therefore we should trust..." clause in your argument. Here's some obvious options:
* Everything is legal (from arsenic onwards)
* Everything is illegal (from dihydrogen monoxide onwards)
* National regulators make the rules.
* Privatized regulators compete to certify food safe.
* ....?
You've criticized the third option for being too permissive, so I'm sure you wouldn't like the first option. The second option would lead to us all starving. So...what is it? Do we try the libertarian wet dream of private testing labs competing in the market to certify food safety? What? I assume you don't think we just appoint Jamie Oliver as a hereditary food safety czar or something.
The only system we have claims that ammonium hydroxide is safe. You say you don't trust that system, and I'm certainly not saying you're wrong not to. But what claims can you point to that it is not safe that don't fall by the same logic?
On the official website of McDonald’s, the company claims that their meat is cheap because, while serving many people every day, they are able to buy from their suppliers at a lower price, and offer the best quality products. But if “pink slime” was really the “best quality” that McDonalds can muster in the US, then why were they able do better in Latin America and Europe? More to the point, why can they apparently do better now in the United States?
Is the author genuinely confused, or even under the impression that anyone might be confused, by that statement from McDonalds, into thinking that the meat they use is the absolutely very best meat possibly available? That when you're paying $1 for a burger, you probably aren't getting quite the same quality as when you buy a nice fillet in a good restaurant, and that "best quality" was not only standard marketing hyperbole, but also was a reference within the context of their goal of being better than their rivals?
McD's use a low quality product in one country. This isn't just "not best quality", it is very low quality meat.
UK advertising laws have the concept of "Legal, Decent, Honest, and Truthful", I don't know what it's like in the US. But calling the worst quality level of meat available from a carcass "best quality" seems deceitful.
These ingredients have terms in the UK, but there are loopholes and these are exploited sometimes. Mechanically recovered meat used in Sausages (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21530861) (Something called a "sausage" in England needs to have certain quantity of meat, where both the quantity of meat and the meaning of meat are defined in law)
How do you define "quality" when talking about McDonalds food? If their burgers taste better than their rivals (subjective, of course) then aren't they the best?
Sure quality of the raw ingredients is weakly correlated to taste, but processing and handling have much bigger effect on the taste of the final product. Take the highest quality beef you can find, run it through the McDonalds beef processing machine and make a Big Mac using the standard McDonalds process and you'll end up with a burger which probably doesn't taste much better than a normal Big Mac.
I'm not sure how you managed to misread my comment so badly.
Something can be very tasty and very poor quality. Add enough salt, fat, sugar, and spices and the worst quality 'pink slime' is tasty.
But a filet mignon is expensive, tender, usually high quality cut of meat that isn't particularly tasty. It doesn't have much fat and isn't weight bearing which affects the taste.
But a filet mignon is expensive, tender, usually high quality cut of meat that isn't particularly tasty. It doesn't have much fat and isn't weight bearing which affects the taste.
Then why buy it? What do you gain by spending extra on it?
Quality is not dependent on taste - nutrition is what food is for, not pleasant sensations. A banana is better quality food than Conglomocorp's banana-flavoured-yoghurt-covered chocolate sticks, even though the latter is far more delicious.
I believe superlatives are like this: "best" means "as good as anything else" and is incredibly vague from a legal standpoint. You could safely say "our hamburgers are the best" but you probably couldn't say "our hamburgers are better than Burger King's", given that the latter statement is a specific claim.
Wow, that's great! So if I get cereal waste, pump it full of sugar, fat and salt so that, what, 10% of the population claim it tastes "the best", you won't have a problem with that being advertised and sold to the gullible, stupid and naive?
It depends on the context. I think in the context of fast food, "the best" implies the food that is the nicest, and no, I don't have a problem with companies like McDonalds serving unhealthy food.
The cereal waste - if it complies with safety standards and people want to buy it, then let them.
If you decide to ban anything that could be bad for people who are gullible, stupid and naive then you're not going to have much left that's allowed.
I don't believe anyone reads "our products are the best" and thinks "that means they're healthy". If you want to be upset about something, how about the fact that they let people think of their salads as a healthy choice while pumping calories into the dressings?
The final product isn't the same as the ingredients, though.
If they are using the absolute worst cut of meat, bleaching it and flavouring it to taste good, the food might be considered "best quality" in terms of taste, but the meat cannot be considered "best quality".
Conversely, the wholly fictional "Kobe beef jerky" kickstarter scam would have been mediocre (if not poor) quality jerky, but (arguably at least) best quality meat, had it existed.
Most disturbing of all is the horrifying fact that because ammonium hydroxide is considered part of the “component in a production procedure” by the USDA, consumers may not know when the chemical is in their food.
I can understand McDonalds goes for the maximum profit. You get what you pay for. But I (naively) thought every company would be required by law to at the very least tell their clients when there's chemicals in the bloody food. That's the part of this I can't understand.
There's always chemicals in the food. That's what food is made of.
So not "when there's chemicals" (because the answer is always), but rather which chemicals, for example flour, salt, sugar, water, etc.
But practically speaking they don't - for example a mold release (oil) doesn't have to be disclosed. I don't like that law, but it is the law.
PS. If you are one of those who use "chemicals" as a shorthand for "dangerous chemicals" then ammonium hydroxide would not count because it's not a dangerous chemical.
He means artificial sweeteners, preservation chemicals, additives, etc.
Then say so (although additive is a meaningless word - don't say that).
Stuff people have not traditionally eaten for evolution-spanning years to be adapted to them, and are only used to maximize profit.
That's your definition. Other people don't define it that that way. I've heard definitions ranging from "dangerous" to "not natural", to "using the chemical name of something".
And your definition excludes sugar (sucrose) and corn (since they are both new), and includes sugar of lead (which has been eaten throughout history despite being toxic), so it's not a helpful definition.
What about Sodium acetate? How would you rank that? Chemical, or non chemical?
Plus if you are concerned about "maximizing profit" then don't eat wheat - modern dwarf wheat was invented to maximize profit. Then again everything people sell is done to maximize profit......
Your definition is useless and you know it. If you are concerned with a particular type of ingredient say so directly. I have great concern over preservatives and artificial food colors - but I don't call them "chemicals" since that means everything and anything.
And your definition excludes sugar (sucrose) and corn (since they are both new), and includes sugar of lead (which has been eaten throughout history despite being toxic), so it's not a helpful definition.
I'm pragmatic. I don't care about having a perfect definition. I'm not writing a dictionary entry -- and some things are inherently fussy anyway.
People know what I'm talking about: any kind of stuff added to food that doesn't belong to it in the first place (the way flour and salt belong in bread and beef belongs in meatballs).
Stuff that serves no nutritional value, and is only used to: give them more enticing color, preserve them for longer periods, have them be able to survive frozen, enable lower quality or throw-away animal parts reused, make them more addictive to consumers, make them cheaper, etc.
>Then again everything people sell is done to maximize profit......
In some kind of hell, maybe. In the real world there do exist people that take pride in their work, and who wouldn't fuck with the food they serve to "maximize profit", even if it means they wont get as much money as they could.
You know, the kind of people that refuse to let their famous restaurant turn into a nation-wide chain, despite the offers, cooks that insist on using the most fresh ingredients, etc.
Stuff that serves no nutritional value, and is only used to: give them more enticing color, preserve them for longer periods, have them be able to survive frozen, enable lower quality or throw-away animal parts reused, make them more addictive to consumers, make them cheaper, etc.
So...no salt, pretty much no sugar, no smoked meats or cheeses, no cured bacon or smallgoods, no pickles, no jams, jellies, or preserves, no applesauce? After all, those techniques are purely used to "preserve [the food] for longer periods prior to the advent of cheap, universal refrigeration. (And historically, there were no "throw-away" animal parts; we ate everything including the brain, eyes, and lungs. So I'm not really sure what point that's meant to make.)
Your "pragmatic definition" of food additives seems to be "stuff that seems weird to coldtea". That may be pragmatic, but it's not useful.
I am 'one of those' people who cares what he (and his kids) eat. I knew it wasn't all that great and fast food isn't really healthy. But I'd like to know about meat getting soaked in ammonium hydroxide to change it from 'not fit for humans' to 'fit for human consumption'.
It's not soaked - it's a small amount (and is perfectly safe). And he's wrong - it's doesn't make it "not fit for humans". The person in the article likes to massively exaggerate, and he has great power over the media, which he is not using responsibly.
Ammonium hydroxide is FDA-GRAS, if that matters in this analysis. I don't know that restaurants are required to list ingredients at all, except on packaged goods. May be wrong about that though.
I can understand McDonalds goes for the maximum profit.
Well, I for one, can't understand it. Maybe I'm not indoctrinated in the free market enough, but basic human decency, and creating a quality product is among things I value.
...Which is why you probably will choose not to eat those burgers and will spend your money on more expensive products and that's fine. Other people might have less money to spend and they'll look for the 'biggest bang for their buck'. But they lack the information to make a good judgment. Providing good labeling and information for your food so you can make a good call, that's what everyone pays the FDA to do but they simply don't.
...Which is why you probably will choose not to eat those burgers and will spend your money on more expensive products and that's fine. Other people might have less money to spend and they'll look for the 'biggest bang for their buck'
No, that's not fine for me. Basic human decency doesn't stop at the middle class.
Why should poor people eat a subpar and dangerous food just because a chain wants to maximize their profits? Are they less human?
Nobody is forcing anyone to eat at McD. For an entire family I think it'll be more expensive than cooking a normal meal. Besides, the average customer for McD is not the poor, it's the middle class. http://www.neatorama.com/2011/11/13/mcdonalds-biggest-custom...
Of course not, but most people on this planet don't believe that one human is just as valuable as another, a homeless drunk just as valuable as Einstein.
Well, if there's someone that is not as valuable as another, is people thinking like this.
Einstein contributions to science might be more valuable than a homeless drunks, but the homeless drunk is just as valuable a life as anybody's.
(Not to mention, if we're looking at the "total cost of ownership" so to speak, the homeless drunk's theories weren't used in making stuff used to kill 250000 innocent people and that can wipe out the whole earth several times).
I agree, just pointing out that most people don't think like this. Even people who have read the chapter called "Your Work Is Not Your Worth" from David Burns' classic Feeling Good book about depression can have serious trouble grasping the fundamental fallacy at play in associating the worth of a human with their actions, achievements, and bank account.
Ammonium hydroxide is classed by the FDA as "generally recognized as safe", so while I certainly side with the argument that they should be required to disclose this, and I understand that some people may prefer to avoid it, I don't think that it's particularly immoral to do this as a way of offering customers cheap food. In fact I'd argue that it's more immoral of them to be helping people become obese than doing this.
But in Europe McDonalds does not use this procedure. Can't be the philosophy stopping them, so must be the law. The Dutch website even states in a big bold font that they don't do use Ammonium hydroxide. 'Never have, never will'. http://www.mcdonalds.nl/meerweten/kwaliteit-voeding/
If they state "never have, never will" it's unlikely to be the law, otherwise they wouldn't need to say that. More likely is that the marketing win is bigger than the increase in cost and/or the belief that less people would eat there if they used it.
Sorry I should clarify, I wasn't suggestion they want to produce cheap food for charitable reasons at all - but yes, that absolutely is their intent, they're a cheap food place with cheap food prices.
Reminds me of the Ammonia the tobacco industry started adding to cigarettes. Not to kill germs but to increase the amount of nicotine contained in the vapor smokers inhale. That cost them quite a lot of money (after 30 years). I'd say obesity is becoming just as dangerous as smoking...
http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/04/minnesota.tobacco/
Ammonium hydroxide is not a dangerous chemical. It is generally regarded as safe by the FDA (that's the FDA's lowest level of regulation, along with chemicals like sodium chloride and dihydrogen oxide).
For any ChemE out there, is ammonium hydroxide a stable chemical compound? Or does it revert quickly to an inert form in the presence of air, water, and light?
The question arises from analogy with chlorine. To remove chlorine from tap water, all that is needed is to let a glass sit on the counter for a while.
My knowledge of modern chemistry (and chemical manufacture) is a little sketchy but, at a crude level, isn't this just taking unfit meat, soaking it in piss and then passing it off as safe?
Urine contains a lot of things, urea being one. Urea can be broken down into ammonia, but ammonia isn't ammonium hydroxide any more than sodium chloride is chlorine. They're not washing the meat with piss by any measure.
Comments
Misleading title. What Jamie Oliver has done is note that McDonald burgers in the US are not fit for human consumption until they've been processed.
But he missed a much bigger scoop! The same is true of McDonald's burgers in every country! In fact, burgers from every chain aren't fit for human consumption without processing (at a minimum, cooking). Hell, without at least some processing, the burger would still be walking around going "moo" and emitting greenhouse gasses.
So the issue isn't "you can't eat it until it's been processed"; that's a given. The question is "what processing is okay", and in particular, "is using ammonium hydroxide safe". And according to the FDA, the UN, the WHO, and most EU countries, it is: http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Quest...
And that seems to pretty much cover it. "The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which has allowed McDonald’s to use otherwise “inedible meat.”" True, but they also use cooking, which also allows the consumption of otherwise "inedible meat". Is cooking safe? Science says yes. Is ammonium hydroxide safe? Science, again, says yes.
Edit: Also, if we're going to go off of "it sounds scary, it must be bad", all burgers contains sodium chloride, and chlorine is a very toxic, dangerous gas! It will kill you if you breathe it! That's the real scandal! The truth is out there! Fight Big Chlorine!
Freshly butchered beef is safe to eat raw so long as the butcher used basic hygiene. People have been eating raw meat for ages. Look at any of the cuisines from Europe through the Levant. They all have traditional raw meat dishes with histories as old as agriculture. In general it's quite tasty, much the same was sushi is. Raw lamb however, I would say is a taste I've not acquired.
Anyhow, even if McD's patties are perfectly safe, there is still a point to be made about what we're trading away with factory processing vs more traditional labor intensive methods.
Nobody wants a quick €26.95,- burger for lunch.. McD burgers aren't high end because consumers don't expect high end going to a fast food joint.
So this is something else I think has gone very wrong in the US. Good food doesn't have to be an expensive luxury. Tartar doesn't have to be high end. In fact, it's best as a quick cold lunch on hot summer days. It's just beef and onion with minimal prep. It should be cheap.
Ho ho ho.
Only he made a valid point, that they use the scrummiest parts they find, that would not be acceptable to pass hygiene tests or be served without chemical treatment, and you just made a not very good joke by taking the "unprocessed" thing out of very specific "processing" context he mentions.
OK then, that settles it. Because state agencies are not known to have approved tons of carcinogenic and harmful chemicals for everyday food use because powerful interests lobby for their use in order to lower their costs...
I mean, it's not like cigarettes aren't also approved and allowed to be sold (without any warning and with "studies" proving them safe, 3-4 decades back).
Or like the FDA approves Coke and Pepsi, products that are known to contribute to obesity, diabetes and several other adverse effects, just because there is a multi-billion industry to be made out of them.
If I'm allowed to be cynical, that the FDA approves something, only tells us that it's not a poison with immmediate effects, nothing much more...
You have a kind of valid point. Scientific studies and the relevant regulatory agencies are not always correct. We can't always trust the scientific consensus (unless it's about global warming...but I digress).
...but you don't mention anything better. There's no "and therefore we should trust..." clause in your argument. Here's some obvious options:
You've criticized the third option for being too permissive, so I'm sure you wouldn't like the first option. The second option would lead to us all starving. So...what is it? Do we try the libertarian wet dream of private testing labs competing in the market to certify food safety? What? I assume you don't think we just appoint Jamie Oliver as a hereditary food safety czar or something.The only system we have claims that ammonium hydroxide is safe. You say you don't trust that system, and I'm certainly not saying you're wrong not to. But what claims can you point to that it is not safe that don't fall by the same logic?
This comment is misleading. Why don't you mention Dihydrogen Monoxide?
Is the author genuinely confused, or even under the impression that anyone might be confused, by that statement from McDonalds, into thinking that the meat they use is the absolutely very best meat possibly available? That when you're paying $1 for a burger, you probably aren't getting quite the same quality as when you buy a nice fillet in a good restaurant, and that "best quality" was not only standard marketing hyperbole, but also was a reference within the context of their goal of being better than their rivals?
McD's use a low quality product in one country. This isn't just "not best quality", it is very low quality meat.
UK advertising laws have the concept of "Legal, Decent, Honest, and Truthful", I don't know what it's like in the US. But calling the worst quality level of meat available from a carcass "best quality" seems deceitful.
These ingredients have terms in the UK, but there are loopholes and these are exploited sometimes. Mechanically recovered meat used in Sausages (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21530861) (Something called a "sausage" in England needs to have certain quantity of meat, where both the quantity of meat and the meaning of meat are defined in law)
(https://www.gov.uk/food-standards-labelling-durability-and-c...)
How do you define "quality" when talking about McDonalds food? If their burgers taste better than their rivals (subjective, of course) then aren't they the best?
Quality for a meat product would cover things like breed of cow used; cut of meat used; and the way that meat is processed.
Using meat from Aberdeen Angus beef cows, and using nice cuts of steak, and mincing it, would result in a high quality product.
Using meat from old dairy cows, mechanically recovered from the carcass after everything else has been used, results in a lower quality product.
I think taste is not relevant to quality. They're not saying "tastier than the rival products".
That's an extraordinarily strange definition of quality. By your definition quality is completely useless and means nothing except "more expensive".
So you basically think people should spend more money for the sake of spending more money? (Why not just send it to me instead?)
But of course in the real world quality does have an effect on taste (or nutrition).
Sure quality of the raw ingredients is weakly correlated to taste, but processing and handling have much bigger effect on the taste of the final product. Take the highest quality beef you can find, run it through the McDonalds beef processing machine and make a Big Mac using the standard McDonalds process and you'll end up with a burger which probably doesn't taste much better than a normal Big Mac.
I'm not sure how you managed to misread my comment so badly.
Something can be very tasty and very poor quality. Add enough salt, fat, sugar, and spices and the worst quality 'pink slime' is tasty.
But a filet mignon is expensive, tender, usually high quality cut of meat that isn't particularly tasty. It doesn't have much fat and isn't weight bearing which affects the taste.
Then why buy it? What do you gain by spending extra on it?
@the sister comment made by user "ars":
Quality is not dependent on taste - nutrition is what food is for, not pleasant sensations. A banana is better quality food than Conglomocorp's banana-flavoured-yoghurt-covered chocolate sticks, even though the latter is far more delicious.
I believe superlatives are like this: "best" means "as good as anything else" and is incredibly vague from a legal standpoint. You could safely say "our hamburgers are the best" but you probably couldn't say "our hamburgers are better than Burger King's", given that the latter statement is a specific claim.
Wow, that's great! So if I get cereal waste, pump it full of sugar, fat and salt so that, what, 10% of the population claim it tastes "the best", you won't have a problem with that being advertised and sold to the gullible, stupid and naive?
It depends on the context. I think in the context of fast food, "the best" implies the food that is the nicest, and no, I don't have a problem with companies like McDonalds serving unhealthy food.
The cereal waste - if it complies with safety standards and people want to buy it, then let them.
If you decide to ban anything that could be bad for people who are gullible, stupid and naive then you're not going to have much left that's allowed.
I don't believe anyone reads "our products are the best" and thinks "that means they're healthy". If you want to be upset about something, how about the fact that they let people think of their salads as a healthy choice while pumping calories into the dressings?
The final product isn't the same as the ingredients, though.
If they are using the absolute worst cut of meat, bleaching it and flavouring it to taste good, the food might be considered "best quality" in terms of taste, but the meat cannot be considered "best quality".
Conversely, the wholly fictional "Kobe beef jerky" kickstarter scam would have been mediocre (if not poor) quality jerky, but (arguably at least) best quality meat, had it existed.
They said they "offer the best quality products", not that they offer products made with the best quality ingredients.
Aha, my mistake - I misread.
In that case my comment is an argument for your point of view, not against it.
McDonalds calls its locations "restaurants", so they should also be judged according to the standards of real restaurants.
I can understand McDonalds goes for the maximum profit. You get what you pay for. But I (naively) thought every company would be required by law to at the very least tell their clients when there's chemicals in the bloody food. That's the part of this I can't understand.
There's always chemicals in the food. That's what food is made of.
So not "when there's chemicals" (because the answer is always), but rather which chemicals, for example flour, salt, sugar, water, etc.
But practically speaking they don't - for example a mold release (oil) doesn't have to be disclosed. I don't like that law, but it is the law.
PS. If you are one of those who use "chemicals" as a shorthand for "dangerous chemicals" then ammonium hydroxide would not count because it's not a dangerous chemical.
Not very useful pedantic correction. He doesn't mean flour, salt, sugar etc.
He means artificial sweeteners, preservation chemicals, additives, etc.
Stuff people have not traditionally eaten for evolution-spanning years to be adapted to them, and are only used to maximize profit.
Then say so (although additive is a meaningless word - don't say that).
That's your definition. Other people don't define it that that way. I've heard definitions ranging from "dangerous" to "not natural", to "using the chemical name of something".
And your definition excludes sugar (sucrose) and corn (since they are both new), and includes sugar of lead (which has been eaten throughout history despite being toxic), so it's not a helpful definition.
What about Sodium acetate? How would you rank that? Chemical, or non chemical?
Plus if you are concerned about "maximizing profit" then don't eat wheat - modern dwarf wheat was invented to maximize profit. Then again everything people sell is done to maximize profit......
Your definition is useless and you know it. If you are concerned with a particular type of ingredient say so directly. I have great concern over preservatives and artificial food colors - but I don't call them "chemicals" since that means everything and anything.
I'm pragmatic. I don't care about having a perfect definition. I'm not writing a dictionary entry -- and some things are inherently fussy anyway.
People know what I'm talking about: any kind of stuff added to food that doesn't belong to it in the first place (the way flour and salt belong in bread and beef belongs in meatballs).
Stuff that serves no nutritional value, and is only used to: give them more enticing color, preserve them for longer periods, have them be able to survive frozen, enable lower quality or throw-away animal parts reused, make them more addictive to consumers, make them cheaper, etc.
>Then again everything people sell is done to maximize profit......
In some kind of hell, maybe. In the real world there do exist people that take pride in their work, and who wouldn't fuck with the food they serve to "maximize profit", even if it means they wont get as much money as they could.
You know, the kind of people that refuse to let their famous restaurant turn into a nation-wide chain, despite the offers, cooks that insist on using the most fresh ingredients, etc.
So...no salt, pretty much no sugar, no smoked meats or cheeses, no cured bacon or smallgoods, no pickles, no jams, jellies, or preserves, no applesauce? After all, those techniques are purely used to "preserve [the food] for longer periods prior to the advent of cheap, universal refrigeration. (And historically, there were no "throw-away" animal parts; we ate everything including the brain, eyes, and lungs. So I'm not really sure what point that's meant to make.)
Your "pragmatic definition" of food additives seems to be "stuff that seems weird to coldtea". That may be pragmatic, but it's not useful.
I am 'one of those' people who cares what he (and his kids) eat. I knew it wasn't all that great and fast food isn't really healthy. But I'd like to know about meat getting soaked in ammonium hydroxide to change it from 'not fit for humans' to 'fit for human consumption'.
It's not soaked - it's a small amount (and is perfectly safe). And he's wrong - it's doesn't make it "not fit for humans". The person in the article likes to massively exaggerate, and he has great power over the media, which he is not using responsibly.
Ammonium hydroxide is FDA-GRAS, if that matters in this analysis. I don't know that restaurants are required to list ingredients at all, except on packaged goods. May be wrong about that though.
Well, I for one, can't understand it. Maybe I'm not indoctrinated in the free market enough, but basic human decency, and creating a quality product is among things I value.
...Which is why you probably will choose not to eat those burgers and will spend your money on more expensive products and that's fine. Other people might have less money to spend and they'll look for the 'biggest bang for their buck'. But they lack the information to make a good judgment. Providing good labeling and information for your food so you can make a good call, that's what everyone pays the FDA to do but they simply don't.
No, that's not fine for me. Basic human decency doesn't stop at the middle class.
Why should poor people eat a subpar and dangerous food just because a chain wants to maximize their profits? Are they less human?
Nobody is forcing anyone to eat at McD. For an entire family I think it'll be more expensive than cooking a normal meal. Besides, the average customer for McD is not the poor, it's the middle class. http://www.neatorama.com/2011/11/13/mcdonalds-biggest-custom...
Of course not, but most people on this planet don't believe that one human is just as valuable as another, a homeless drunk just as valuable as Einstein.
Well, if there's someone that is not as valuable as another, is people thinking like this.
Einstein contributions to science might be more valuable than a homeless drunks, but the homeless drunk is just as valuable a life as anybody's.
(Not to mention, if we're looking at the "total cost of ownership" so to speak, the homeless drunk's theories weren't used in making stuff used to kill 250000 innocent people and that can wipe out the whole earth several times).
I agree, just pointing out that most people don't think like this. Even people who have read the chapter called "Your Work Is Not Your Worth" from David Burns' classic Feeling Good book about depression can have serious trouble grasping the fundamental fallacy at play in associating the worth of a human with their actions, achievements, and bank account.
Ammonium hydroxide is classed by the FDA as "generally recognized as safe", so while I certainly side with the argument that they should be required to disclose this, and I understand that some people may prefer to avoid it, I don't think that it's particularly immoral to do this as a way of offering customers cheap food. In fact I'd argue that it's more immoral of them to be helping people become obese than doing this.
But in Europe McDonalds does not use this procedure. Can't be the philosophy stopping them, so must be the law. The Dutch website even states in a big bold font that they don't do use Ammonium hydroxide. 'Never have, never will'. http://www.mcdonalds.nl/meerweten/kwaliteit-voeding/
If they state "never have, never will" it's unlikely to be the law, otherwise they wouldn't need to say that. More likely is that the marketing win is bigger than the increase in cost and/or the belief that less people would eat there if they used it.
I don't think their intent is to "offer customers cheap food" (as if they could care less). They just use those techniques to increase their margins.
Sorry I should clarify, I wasn't suggestion they want to produce cheap food for charitable reasons at all - but yes, that absolutely is their intent, they're a cheap food place with cheap food prices.
Reminds me of the Ammonia the tobacco industry started adding to cigarettes. Not to kill germs but to increase the amount of nicotine contained in the vapor smokers inhale. That cost them quite a lot of money (after 30 years). I'd say obesity is becoming just as dangerous as smoking... http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/04/minnesota.tobacco/
Misleading title. The pre-treatment meat was unfit for human consumption.
And washing it with dangerous chemicals make it "fit"?
Ammonium hydroxide is not a dangerous chemical. It is generally regarded as safe by the FDA (that's the FDA's lowest level of regulation, along with chemicals like sodium chloride and dihydrogen oxide).
Thousands die each year due to dihydrogen oxide. It may be safe to ingest, yet if you inhale it there's little hope...
How much of what FDA approves is due to lobbying and lowering of standards?
Of the kind that no FDA guy would like to feed his children with those if he had an alternative?
Don't know. You could ask this question about any chemical. That doesn't make it actually dangerous.
To support what other people are saying about this chemical: (http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Quest...)
Avoiding this chemical may be trickier than avoiding McD's burgers: (http://www.beefproducts.com/ammonium_hydroxide.php)
For any ChemE out there, is ammonium hydroxide a stable chemical compound? Or does it revert quickly to an inert form in the presence of air, water, and light?
The question arises from analogy with chlorine. To remove chlorine from tap water, all that is needed is to let a glass sit on the counter for a while.
Strange source, somehow? Anyway there is no time mention but it looks like McDonald's solved the issue at least two years ago?
My knowledge of modern chemistry (and chemical manufacture) is a little sketchy but, at a crude level, isn't this just taking unfit meat, soaking it in piss and then passing it off as safe?
No.
Why?
Until recently Ammonia was extracted from Urine and rotten vegetables was it not?
Urine contains a lot of things, urea being one. Urea can be broken down into ammonia, but ammonia isn't ammonium hydroxide any more than sodium chloride is chlorine. They're not washing the meat with piss by any measure.