12
Jun 2012
Another Reason to Eat Organic
I would like to share another interesting article with you today regarding a common food we love to enjoy in the hot summer months – Hamburgers. This is not for the faint of heart, but important to recognize as there are few things in life more significant than the food and drink we feed on daily.
By Christopher J. Petherick
Wheres the Beef in your Ground Beef?
Summertime is the time when people across the country gather outdoors around grills and picnic tables, cooking up what many people claim is the other national food besides hot dogs: hamburgers. But watch out: There’s a nasty surprise in that supposedly healthy, low fat, lean patty. And it is whats inside that’s certain to turn even the strongest of iron stomachs out there.
If Americans actually knew what they were eating, they would be revolted. According to a new report by a leading farm magazine. what was once barely considered acceptable for the lowest-quality pet food is now increasingly being added to ground beef and sold as a lean, health-conscious food.
The May issue of ‘Mary Jane’s Farm’ reports that what would have previously ended up in a trash can or bound for the pet-food factory after a steer is slaughtered at large scale slaughterhouses is now being processed and sold as an additive for ground beef.
“Ten years ago, the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called ‘trimmings’ that were sold primarily as pet food,” reports the magazine. “Now Beef Products Inc. of South Dakota transforms trimmings into something they call ‘boneless lean beef.'”
Simply put, the process involves boiling down the trimmings until they are turned into gloppy liquid. Then this soupy mess is dumped into a centrifuge, where the remaining inedible sinew or gristle is spun out of the “mash” or “pink slime”, depending on who you ask – is then frozen and sold as a low cost additive to hamburger meat.
Beef Products reportedly produces 7 million pounds of this concoction every week. It is then distributed to grocery stores, schools, and other institutions around the country. This is certainly bad enough. Sadly, however, there is more.
In the United States, cattle are increasingly being fed corn in massive feedlots, largely because corn is grown in abundance, is cheap and fattens steers up quickly. The problem here, say some researchers, is that this practice is also creating super bacteria that are contaminating our food supply.
A cow’s digestive system is not set up to digest corn efficiently. Feeding cattel corn can result in health problems, such as liver problems. Cows then have to be given antibiotics regularly to control infections.
But worse still, the corn acidifies a cow’s rumen, or gut, which creates the perfect environment for a particular virulent strain of bacterium called E. coli. Of course, the obvious solution would be to stop feeding cows corn. But that would eat into the profits of agribusiness. So these large slaughterhouses devised a novel-and completely disgusting-way of eradicating the E. coli. They started dousing the ground beef with ammonia. Since the ammonia is “only” used in the processing, the major slaughter houses are not obligated to list it as an ingredient.
So what can Americans do to avoid toxic hamburger meat?
The easiest way is to purchase locally raised beef that comes exclusively from cows fed only on grass. This is increasingly popping up in stores across the country. If you do not have access to local farms, you can ask your local grocer or butcher to stock beef that comes from cows fed only grass.
I spent many hours today trying to remedy all our class signup issues and think I have found a fix for them all!!! There is one conclusion I came to while undergoing this process. The web browser ‘Internet Explorer’ is garbage. I am sorry if this is your browser of choice, but IE causes more issues with more software than any other. This is an easy fix on your part. Download Safari, Firefox, or Google Chrome as all of these work great and are highly compatible with our class registration software. Also, it was just brought to my attention by the computer techs that Internet Explorer is the only browser that they DO NOT support, meaning that it will NEVER work with our system. All the browsers I mentioned are simple to install with the click of a button and best of all, they are all FREE!
June 13, 2012 WOD
Skill:
Medicine Ball Clean
Strength:
Dead lift 3-3-3-3-3
Conditioning:
Complete rounds of 3-6-9-12-15 for time of:
Wall ball 20/14#
Walking lunge w/ over head plate carry 45/25
Rest 5 minutes, then:
Complete rounds of 5-10-15-20 for time of:
Hang muscle snatch 75/55#
Med ball clean 20/14#
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