Day 137: Avoid Mechanically-Separated "Meat"

As if this were even an option over here at Green V. Green. Well, this is more an excuse to blog about mechanically-separated "meat" than anything. Consider yourselves educated.

Have you ever read an ingredients label and seen an item called "mechanically-separated chicken" or "mechanically-separated pork"? This is how that item (I hesitate to call it food) is made.

First a machine vacuums every last piece of flesh or fat off the difficult bones, such as head bones or tiny foot bones. The result is turned into a paste:



This paste is soaked in ammonia to kill bacteria. Then, since it's lost its flavor, artificial flavors are re-introduced, and the mash is colored to not be pink anymore.

Here is the result:


and


Both of these are foods made and sold by Tyson (for example here and here). Just because it comes in a shiny plastic bag with a label on it of a company you recognize, doesn't mean the methods used to produce it aren't medieval.