Pink Slime by Mario C

                                                           

                                                                                                             

Last week I took some time to ask a couple people if they knew what was in their Big Mac and if they knew what pink slime or ground beef was. 9 times out of 10 they didn't know what was pink slime or what their big macs meat was really made of. This fake beef is made by gathering waste trimmings, simmering them at low heat so that the fat separates easily from the muscle, and spinning a centrifuge to complete the separation. Next, the mixture is sent through pipes where it is sprayed with ammonia gas to kill bacteria. The process is completed by packaging the meat into bricks. Then, it is frozen and shipped to grocery stores and meat packers, where it is added to most ground beef.

Although there is information telling us what most of U.S. beef is made of, why do we keep eating this disgusting product? Well, because half of us don't care what we eat, Americans in other states are known to eat about anything, without being educated enough to know what they are eating. McDonald's is a well known for using pink slime.They mainly use it for their meat and on their chicken nuggets. If you were to go to Canada or any different country you would notice that they have standards there, they got regulations so that fast foods can't use ground beef in their food. In fact, in a recent video,"McDonald's Pink Slime" states that meat from different countries is way better and have a more natural taste than our beef does. That is mainly because we are one of the only countries to use ground beef. What makes it even worse is that in the process of making pink slime we also use cleaning products to sanitize it.

Why do they need to sanitize ground beef? Because it is made from animal wastes and contains bacteria. One of the most poisonous cleaning products America uses is known as ammonia hydroxide, they spray it so that pink slime is safe to eat. A chef known as Jamie Oliver, who decided to give McDonald's a hard time about using this poison on their food. As a result McDonald's USA has just announced that they have stopped using ammonia hydroxide in the re ground beef. But now this tells us that McDonald's ground beef has more bacteria than before.

There have also been reports of people who have even died because of an allergic reaction to the cleaning products that are used to sanitize ground beef. For example, I found an article on a guy with down syndrome. He was allergic to ground beef and the cleaning product used in it as well as a result he died from an allergic reaction. I found this article in New York Daily News. It sounded kind of cheesy though, because the guy was old and sounds like his family probably used one of his allergies to get money out of the restaurant they accused of killing him.

In Taiwan, they have signs outside of their restaurants that say, "Don't worry, we don't use American beef", which I thought was really funny. My point in this is that ground beef over all is not good for you at all and I encourage you to think about where you're going to eat, make sure they serve real organic food. If you go out with your family one day I challenge one to ask the restaurant you go to if they serve real meat in their dishes. It takes one person to make a difference in their own life, if you care about your health you will think twice before you eat that Big Mac.