My Food, My Way 3 “combo bins” are filled with fat from feedlot steers, lean meat from
culled dairy cows, and imported scrap trimmings. The bins are
mixed, ground, shipped, remixed, and reground based on market op-
portunities. The typical meat patty can contain bits of multiple cows
from different countries.
To squeeze out more meat, a few companies have developed tech-
nology that harvests bits of meat embedded in fat. Heating and cen-
trifuging fat trimmings, then treating the mixture with ammonia or
citric acid, creates a beef slurry. Meat listed as “pure ground beef ” on
the ingredient label can be as much as 5 percent added slurry.
The meat sector prefers to call the slurry “lean finely textured beef.”
When ABC News reported on it, they quoted a USDA microbiologist
who did not consider the slurry to be ground beef at all, instead dub-
bing it “pink slime.” A defamation lawsuit was filed by one of the
companies against ABC News. Terms of the settlement were not dis-
closed.^ Yet the case illustrates just how important carefully chosen
words and labels are to selling food.
In the dairy section of the modern supermarket, a major rebrand-
ing is under way. Advertisements of celebrities and athletes with white
mustaches have fallen out of favor, especially among younger people
who drink less milk. While sales of cottage cheese and milk are de-
clining, competition from alternative beverages is heating up. Saving the
day, along with butter and cheese, is the spectacular growth in yogurt
sales.
Food producers are riding a wave of excitement about probiotics,
promising that the fermentation process used to make yogurt will
boost your immune system, reduce symptoms of lactose intolerance,
and improve gastrointestinal health. Probiotics, meaning “for life,”
are part of an exciting frontier to understand our microbiome, the
community of microbes that live on and in us. Yet what is currently
known about probiotics added to foods pales in comparison to what is
not known, including their role and efficacy.
What food providers do know is that invoking health claims sells
more food—a practice that dates back to when micronutrients were
first being identified. Adding probiotics to yogurt has been money