Madame Thursday

Apr. 16, 2012 at 5:49pm with 69 notes

Reblogged from alexandraerin

[Image: A sculptural art piece on a white rectangular stand with a large silver metal tube pointing down diagonally as something bright pink and slightly gooey looking comes out. In the background is a wall with large photos on it and people milling around in the background.]

alexandraerin:

Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s what all fast-food chicken is made from—things like chicken nuggets and patties. Also, the processed frozen chicken in the stores is made from it.

Basically, the entire chicken is smashed and pressed through a sieve—bones, eyes, guts, and all. it comes out looking like this.

There’s more: because it’s crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color.

But, hey, at least it tastes good, right?

ETA: Snopes has already debunked this exact block of text.

I hope that I’m missing some sarcasm or sense of humor here or a joke. I’m bad at getting things like that, especially over the internet. This looks a lot like food shaming to me. And also, I don’t think that this is what the picture is of AT ALL. And Google Image search yields no results on what it actually is. It seems like an abstract sculpture at an exhibit of some kind judging by the artsy photographs on the wall behind it and all the people standing around looking at walls.

First off, people often eat foods that contain pink slime because THEY CAN’T AFFORD OTHER THINGS. It’s not about “well, at least it tastes good”. It’s about, “well, at least I can afford to buy it and feed it to my family”. So trying to gross people out about this kind of food processing feels like a stab at those who have the lowest amount of food security seeing as how “pink slime” is often used to make cheaper fast food products as well as school meals for districts already struggling to feed students anything at all when a great number of them are on free/reduced cost lunches as it is. This feels like you’re trying to disgust and gross out people who eat this because their options are terribly limited.

Second, any ground meat product is going to look gross. Meat itself, in it’s rawest state is kinda gross looking. The internal bits of animals are just not that aesthetically pleasing to human eyeballs because, well, they’re internal and meant to be functional not attractive like the petals and scents of flowers and trees. Eating of all the parts of an animal is something a lot of different communities do. They may not grind them together and put them through the same process as “pink slime” (as it’s called) goes through, but eyes, hearts, tongues, feet, livers, and intestines of animals are all things that people have happily munched on to provide themselves nutrition and pleasurable eating. Just to name a few.

Third, hey, if the ammonia thing upsets you, then don’t eat a bagel. That shiny, hard surface they have on the outside? They get that by boiling the bagel in water that often has LYE in it. Yes, lye. Other products contain it, too. It’s not a chemical you want to ingest in large quantities, of course, and it certainly doesn’t smell or taste good on it’s own. But it’s something that occurs naturally because it’s just 1 nitrogen molecule and three hydrogen molecules. Thus, NH3. And NH3 is used sometimes to start cheese cultures in manufacturing.

Oh, and it’s also found in your kidneys as a part of how it functions and NH3 can be part of how the kidneys guard against excess acidity in the body.

Fourth, if I’m missing something and just gave out a lecture of science and food policing to someone who didn’t need it, my biggest apologies.

(Source: velved)