Sunday, March 11, 2012

Pink Slime or Pulverized Cow Anus?

Fresh ground beef
photo credit
For the past few weeks I have been slowly moving towards only buying my family all natural meat. I was not doing this necessarily for humane reasons but mostly because it just tastes better.

My husband didn't really care either way what kind of meat I was buying, though he does agree the natural stuff tastes better, but after seeing a story on the news about the infamous pink slime he has forbidden me from buying regular ground beef.

Now, I wasn't going to be buying it anyways but it is nice to have him on board with us eating more natural whole foods and if seeing some pink goo that is made up of the crap left on the slaughterhouse floor is what it took to do that then hip-hip-hooray!

What does switching to buying all natural and grass fed meat mean? Well, first and foremost it means that I will be spending more on meat which to me is a moot point because as long as it is healthier and tastes better then oh well. Second of all it means that I will be shopping at the happiest place on earth, Whole Foods, a lot more which means I'll have to plan my shopping better as Whole Foods is not very close to my house. When I can't get to Whole Foods I will supplement with Stop and Shop's Nature's Promise line of meats as they are all natural, taste very good and do not contain pink slime.

I am not an alarmist by nature and as I said, I was switching us to better meat options before this pink slime being in 70% of the ground beef story came to light. The slime is obviously not going to kill anyone who eats it because the Lord knows that I would be dead by now if it did, but honestly as a mom my benchmark for what I feed my family cannot be "if it was approved by the FDA then it must be good". I don't feed my family the $1 a package hot dogs- they are safe to eat but definitely questionable in the ingredient department. I don't feed my family Hamburger Helper- it is safe to eat but the nutrition is total crap and even I as a novice cook can throw some beef and noodles in a pan to make a homemade version. Plus, I don't like yucky stuff in my food. I am still a picky four year old child at heart and knowing that something I am eating was once used in dog food before a system was devised to make it edible for humans makes me gag. I buy my dog very expensive dog food so I even doubt the stuff he eats has pulverized cow anus in it (but if it does then I won't judge him for liking pulverized cow anus, it's just not my thing).

So please, join me in my journey to feed my family better while somehow trying to stick to my $100 a week budget (this includes groceries, household cleaners, toiletries, diapers, pet food). Notice I said trying- I expect to fail miserably for a bit while I figure this whole thing out called whole foods on a budget. And yes, you will see me buying things that are not whole foods- I have three kids, am lazy by nature and have a husband who enjoys certain foods so all whole foods all of the time is just not going to happen in this house. You can also stay tuned on the chance that I may just say screw it and just start feeding my kids spray cheese out of the can.

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