Entry #9: Food Perspective Video: Pink Slime

More than 15 years ago the first Mac Donald’s was open in my hometown in Europe and my family decided to visit it. We were very excited because of the big reputation of Mac Donald’s in the world and the fact that we just received our visas to immigrate to USA. We had hamburgers and Coca Cola. The food was great! It was very tasty!  

After couple of months we came to USA and were very excited to visit the real, American Mac Donald’s this time. We ordered the same menu we had back home-hamburgers and Coca Cola. I will never forget my disappointment when I had the first bite from that “original” hamburger. The taste was soar, bitter, and very different from what I tasted in Bulgaria. My family shared with me that they were disappointed too. We were wondering what were we actually eating. We were sure it was not meat. As a result, we decided to never eat hamburgers from Mac Donald’s any more.

Watching the video “Pink Slime", I finally received an answer to the question, what was in the hamburgers in our first visit to MacDonald’s in USA. It was a gooey, pink slime, mixed with ammonia hydroxide. I was glad that we never had some of this disgusting staff any more. 

From the movie I also learn that the beef in the supermarkets has that “lean, finely textured beef." It is in almost every product that contains ground beef. I can’t believe that USDA "did not think" to include this information in the label. On the top of this the food industry adds ammonia hydroxide to kill bacteria. I wonder if they could not find less dangerous for our health way to prevent the contamination of food, instead of using toxic chemicals.

The most outrageous for me is the fact that our children have been fed the “pink slime”. In the schools, our children are fed with something they want to convince us is a protein. As a person who has been in the medical field all my professional life, I can say for sure that cartilage is not an easily digested protein that can be utilized from the growing bodies of children. As a mother and a clinician I think that our children need to be fed soluble, easily digestible proteins, like the ones found in real beef meat, not in "pink slime". 

As a working citizen, who works two jobs to be able to survive financially, I can understand the concern about the increasing prices of the meat. But we have to think about the future. Personally, if I have to choose between spending more money now on better quality food or later on treatment of diseases, I prefer to spend more money now. I understand that people, who can’t afford to buy more expensive meat, would not agree with this statement. 

At least, tell us, the consumers, what we eat and we will decide how to choose.

As a person who has both, an American and European citizenship, I keep asking myself, why American food is so bad. We, the consumers, started asking questions, how is our food made, and what is actually in our food. Then things, like “pink slime” started to come out in the news. I wonder what is next.

Why we, as consumers, have to pay with our health the price, so the food industry corporations would keep making billions of dollars. I think that we have been deceived. We, the American citizens, think that our government institutions would keep us healthy and safe. We trusted them. As a result we have obesity epidemics, and diabetes epidemics in adults and children. 

I have no doubt in the fact that, we, as consumers and citizens, have the right to ask questions, to ask for changes, to protect our health, and our children’s health.