Recently watched almost all of Food, Inc., and well…. they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s the one that stood out to me:
The demand for beef has become so high that in order to fill this ever-increasingly tall order, the manufacturing plants (the places where the cows go to get “chopped up” for lack of a better way to express it) find it increasingly difficult to keep diseased meat from spreading; the workers come in contact with so much meat that if one bit is diseased, it easily gets spread. Their solution? We’ll just run it through an ammonia-cycle and ta-da! “Clean meat.” No joke, this stuff undergoes somewhat of a wash cycle (looks like a laundry machine, kid you not), and then gets pressed into patties such as the one above.. boxed, shipped.. feeling chunks rising).
(With the disclaimer that I’m not 100% sure on what they feed their cattle, these interesting couple of aerial pics) As the demand for beef increases and suppliers attempt to fill the orders, more and more cattle are now being fed strictly grain diets – which as we all know is not what their main diet is supposed to consist of (for healthy cattle, anyways)! On visiting this particular ranch in California, I noticed that their cattle were “grazing” in all-brown surroundings. A Google map image shows something interesting: the same brown “fields.” Where is the grass in all this?……….
Here’s the first image I grabbed, just to give an idea:
This second shows the span that this cattle farm covers (zoomed out, circled in yellow). In case there is any confusion, I labeled the colors…
Again, maybe this particular farm does feed their cattle greens however, their fields look quite a bit different than the green pastures I was used to seeing cattle grazing in in Germany. It’s just a bit more realistic to me now that I’ve seen this documentary & aerial image. I liked their steaks. Worth investigating.
Anyways, there were some other disturbing images, but this to me was the most. To eat something that has been treated with ammonia, to actually crave it (b/c let’s face it, I would crave a Big Mac or cheeseburger once in a while) makes me now want to upchuck that treated chuck! Gross. This is not including any other form of meat, this is simply beef. The documentary covers much more!
Makes me then also think of all the other things I shouldn’t eat.. that’ll be another day tho.. my burger cravings have since come to a screeching halt – and believe me if I had a child, I would do as my mother did and never allow me to eat there (Thank you to both of my parents for always, Nutella aside! giving us healthy foods to grow up on). Thank you, Food, Inc., for explaining to me (and showing me) exactly what “processed” means.
Highly recommend this documentary, if you are interested in quality food and how you can help yourself be just a tad healthier.
Watch the trailer, if you dare (watch the movie if you care):
beatrixszucs 