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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums14 Things You Really Don’t Want To Know About Your Groceries
. This is a great article, enjoy
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/dark-secrets-how-food-groceries-are-made
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)---
ellie
(6,929 posts)I went for the truth on groceries and stayed for the animals posts.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)"Red- and pink-colored products are often dyed with cochineal extract, aka the bodies of crushed-up teeny insects."
Yes, those beetles have been used for red coloring by humans for thousands of years for everything from food to paint. Is there a problem with it?
"Many ice creams are thickened and stabilized with carrageenan, which is actually a seaweed extract."
Holy fuck! Something from a plant is in my FOOD! The sugar in ice creams comes from an extract of a grass too. So?
"This is how the ingredients for packaged veggie burgers get mixed together:"
Okay. Is it supposed to be mixed by elves in small bowls or something? It looks like someone in a sanitary facility wearing a sanitary outfit to mix ingredients in a sanitary container using a sanitary implement. What is mixing a hundred pounds of ingredients together supposed to look like?
"Not-from-concentrate orange juice is processed with flavor packs to artificially ensure that each bottle tastes exactly the same."
This one is cute, as it goes on to say - "Because the added flavor is technically derived from orange oil and extract, it doesnt need to be specifically listed in the ingredients."
OMFG! They are putting stuff from ORANGES in ORANGE JUICE! How is that even legal!
"Most commercial milk is made by combining, heating, homogenizing, and repackaging the milk of hundreds of cows."
Repackaging the milk of hundreds of cows? You mean it's not sold IN THE COW? This, above all of them, is the real head-scratcher on the list for me since it is the one in which I have direct experience. I worked for local dairy farmer as a teenager and I did not realize at the time, how horrific it was that when we put the milking machines to work on the cows, all of the lines were going to the same tank. I had no idea there was a "one cow per bottle" rule.
Greek yogurt manufacturing produces millions of pounds of (toxic) acid whey waste every year, and no one knows what to do with it.
Why single out "Greek yogurt" here. This is true of ALL yogurt, as well as ALL cheese. Does anyone know what "cheescloth" is, and why it is called "cheescloth"? Because the process of making cheese - all kinds of cheese - has for thousands of years depended on using a fabric sieve to pull the curds out of the whey and separate them.
"Maraschino cherry producers bleach the fruit with chemicals and then marinate it in huge vats of corn syrup and dye to turn the cherries red again."
I want to see a head count of everyone who thought maraschino cherries came from marashino cherry trees. Bleached? With chemicals? I insist they start bleaching them with something other than "chemicals".
Seriously, where is the chucklehead who thought maraschino cherries were some kind of natural product.
Next thing, you'll tell me that Swedish Fish aren't really fish and don't come from Sweden.
"Hot dogs are filled with a gloopy blend of meat trimmings, fat, and starch or cereal filler.
OMG, it's "gloopy". I can't imagine how anyone can tolerate something "gloopy" being used in manufacturing SAUSAGE.
Shredded cheese is packed with cellulose aka refined wood pulp to keep it from clumping.
Anyone who buys "shredded cheese" is, in my book, too stupid to care what is in it. A grater costs next to nothing, and will pay for itself pretty much the first time it is used to shred cheese, instead of buying it in.... a plastic bag... made from chemicals.
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)The DU purity squad, doing their best to second guess the world......
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)I said nothing about you.
Several points in that article are purely juvenile. Yes, to mix a big batch of ingredients, you need a big container and a big mixing implement.
Several other points indicate the writer is completely unaware of how food has been made - such as yogurt and cheese - since these things were invented. The problem with whey is that we no longer have a village where some guy brings his cows down from the hills to supply that village with cheese. Instead, we have millions and millions of people who want cheese, don't know where the fuck it comes from or how it is made, and presumably are shocked to learn you end up with whey as a by-product. Yes - it has to go somewhere and it's a big problem.
But I want to meet the person who thinks you can shred cheese, put it in a bag, and not have it clump unless you do something to stop that from happening.
I guess my reaction really isn't so much with the writer, but with the level of abject ignorance and stupidity assumed on the part of the reader.
But I believe it is "okay" on DU to comment on the contents of an article. I thought that is what the "reply" button is for.
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)milk products). Got a big kick out of your points on dairy (multiple-cow packaging) and cheese-making
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)And... who knew that non-dairy creamer didn't come from a dairy?
I love the way the article calls it "secrets" and, for the non-dairy creamer, these "secrets" are printed on the freaking label.
Oh well, time for me to call in the margarine herd....
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)creatures to walk the planet. And the Jersey and Brown Swiss calves are so stinkin' cute!
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)it's amazing how some here think they are the smartest people in the world and assume they have the right to call out the "level of abject ignorance and stupidity assumed on the part of the reader".
I think in your reply I discovered a high level of abject ignorance and stupidity.
Enjoy your self-aggrandizement.
Rex
(65,616 posts)I have no idea how they crammed them all into their short lifespan, but evidently they do.
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)I am an expert in the use of the microwave, radio, tv remote, and toilet to name just a few.....
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Pick any of the ones I commented on.
Explain to me what is wrong with a perfectly normal way of mixing a large batch of ingredients for veggie burgers.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)I enjoyed it.
LisaLynne
(14,554 posts)Much more coherent and useful than what was going through my mind when I was reading it. Especially the veggie burger part. Sigh.
JW2020
(169 posts)I remember hearing it when I was a kid.
Brainstormy
(2,381 posts)this writer missed the point on a lot of these. Appears the research was pretty superficial. The point is carrageenan. Extracted from red seaweed. It is suspected of being carcinogenic, but it definitely has harmful effects on human intestinal cells.
It's used as a thickening or gelling agent or as an emulsifier to keep ingredients in food from separating. Its injected into raw chicken and other meats to help them retain water. Its used to keep cocoa from separating from milk in chocolate milk. It appears in ice creams, jellies, cottage cheese, toothpaste, fruit gushers, infant formulas and much, much more. Pretty useful stuff, Id say. And the fact that Carrageenan is also used to de-ice frozen airplanes makes it even more impressive.
But lots of folks think it's pretty dangerous. Here's just one link: http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/06/eminent-scientist-addresses-impact-of-carrageenan-in-food/
Sort of the same thing going on with the cochineal (red dye). The real scandal here, if there is one, is that the coloring is rarely labeled. Some people have allergies. Some people just wouldn't like to eat bugs if they knew it. (not exactly vegetarian And some have religious issues.
There's some substance underneath several of the issues in the article, but it's delivered as yellow journalism and really pretty shallow.
petronius
(26,608 posts)at "IN THE COW?"
However, you may be on to something: people will pay good money for single malt/single barrel whisky, so perhaps an enterprising dairy can cash in with a single pasture/single bovine bottling. Preferably not too aged...
NickB79
(19,283 posts)Most facilities have filtration systems that extract the whey protein and sell it for products such as whey bodybuilding powder or re-use it in-house to bulk up the protein content of other food products the factory might make.
Disclaimer: I work in a dairy plant that makes cottage cheese, yogurt and sour cream that uses such a system.
customerserviceguy
(25,183 posts)Right you are, so many people must think that their food comes delivered from heaven, delivered in little bags by angels. At leaest those shocked by this story, anyway.
longship
(40,416 posts)Those poor, poor oleo cows. All they do all day, trapped in their barns, is get milked, milked, milked.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)The writer seems to shrug it off -- but it causes major GI distress & belly rot for lots of human beings and pets (they stuff it in lots of pet foods).
frazzled
(18,402 posts)And it's not a slide show from Buzzfeed.(Warning: actual environmentalists and scientists were quoted in the making of this article):
It took the death of a small, rare member of the weasel family to focus the attention of Northern Californias marijuana growers on the impact that their huge and expanding activities were having on the environment.
The animal, a Pacific fisher, had been poisoned by an anticoagulant in rat poisons like d-Con. Since then, six other poisoned fishers have been found. Two endangered spotted owls tested positive. Mourad W. Gabriel, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, concluded that the contamination began when marijuana growers in deep forests spread d-Con to protect their plants from wood rats.
That news has helped growers acknowledge, reluctantly, what their antagonists in law enforcement have long maintained: like industrial logging before it, the booming business of marijuana is a threat to forests whose looming dark redwoods preside over vibrant ecosystems.
Hilltops have been leveled to make room for the crop. Bulldozers start landslides on erosion-prone mountainsides. Road and dam construction clogs some streams with dislodged soil. Others are bled dry by diversions. Little water is left for salmon whose populations have been decimated by logging.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/us/marijuana-crops-in-california-threaten-forests-and-wildlife.html?ref=us&_r=0
Drahthaardogs
(6,843 posts)You mean people did not know that hot dogs are made from trimmings and emulsified? In addition, there are rat hairs in your peanut butter (sometimes), bugs get squashed in your ketchup, and sausage is cased in intestines.
bike man
(620 posts)Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)high-end, $20 lb. yummiest of yummy steaks come to their plate either. I'd bet very good money that if they encountered this meat before it was all cleaned up, butchered, and nicely packaged, they would throw it away.
We're just so completely disconnected from life anymore.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Not only disconnected, but with very little idea of the scale and scope of infrastructure needed to provide the most basic things to populations of millions...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023044896
Adsos Letter
(19,459 posts)he lasted 2 weeks, and has been a vegetarian for the 30+ years since.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)The large commercial slaughterhouses produce the diseased swill that's flogged off on the little people and their pets at their local supermarket. It's not even properly butchered, let alone aged. They take perfectly good steers and shoot them full of poisons and push them through the factory to get the most weight out the other end. People would probably be better off eating road kill, at least it's real meat.
It is really disgusting and a terrible waste.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)MineralMan
(146,345 posts)I delivered milk to people's homes in high school we did not do it that way. We put cows in a trailer and took them to each house. Then, i milked one of the cows directly into the bottles. Of course that was in ancient times. The early 1960s. I don't hold with this newfangled technology.
Brainstormy
(2,381 posts)I remember getting milk delivered as a kid. Never knew the cow was in the truck.