Not to mention the possibility of ... whatever other unnamed “seasoning” is in this meat posing complications for persons with allergies.
I also told the man I was a reporter for the Westsider. This seemed to make him nervous. His name tag said “Ron,” but he refused to give a last name. He said he didn’t know anything about the so-called seasoned meat, because all he did was package it and set it out on the shelves.
The store manager, Melvin, also gave no last name and refused to speak on the record. 2
Mary was persistent, however, and wouldn’t give up.
I asked why a fourth of the packaged meat on the meat counter was labeled “seasoned?” He said it was because it “has flavor” in it. I asked whether sodium was the best choice for flavor, reminding him ... about people with hypertension.
Melvin said if people have special needs then they should pay more attention to the foods they eat and make better choices when choosing their groceries. He seemed anxious for me to go away.
At [her other neighborhood store], the butcher said flatly “no comment!” He was not wearing a name tag at all. The store manager said he was busy and to leave my phone number to call me later on the issue. But I told him I would wait. After an hour, he came and said he needed to make a couple of phone calls first to know the right answers to my questions. He never got back with me. I also called him and left a message, but he ignored it. 3
Since reading Mary’s story I’ve made some forays of my own, to Canadian supermarkets, and found the same sorts of labels, and the same reluctance of store employees to answer questions about them. Most often, they simply shrug and plead ignorance. In some stores most meat labels now carry seasoning “instructions,” advising shoppers to “season with pepper and or spices (No Salt).”
Why should diners suddenly need to be told—after centuries of deciding this question for themselves—how to season their meat? And why no salt?
Determined to get an answer, I followed the story up the food sales chain, from store clerk, to meat manager, to wholesale meat salesman, to a customer service agent for a meat packer in Manitoba, who at first told me “we have a lot of moisture-enhanced products going out now, because it tends to make the pork less chewy, more tender. But there is some salt in the moisture that’s going into the pork already.... It’s like a brine solution.” When I mentioned the possible effects of salt on people with hypertension, however, she changed her explanation and claimed the no salt label was there “just because salt can make pork tough. If you salt it, it will be too tough.” This explanation seemed to have more fishiness than pork about it. I’ve been putting salt on my pork chops for more than 50 years, and never noticed it making them tough.
Store employees may be reluctant to talk to reporters, or even ordinary shoppers, and customer service people may not want to alarm consumers, but the Internet tells all. Click on the Google search engine and type in the terms “pre-seasoned meat,” or “moistureenhanced meat,” and the real story comes clear. That’s what I did.
A SPREADING TREND
A website called the Virtual Weber Bullet explained the phenomenon succinctly:
Enhanced meat is becoming more and more popular in the United States. This trend is well established with pork and poultry and is spreading to beef products.…
Enhanced meat can be defined as fresh, whole muscle meat that has been injected with a solution of water and other ingredients that may include salt, phosphates, antioxidants, and flavorings. Regular meat can be defined as fresh, whole muscle meat that has not been injected or marinated.…
The problem isn’t so much enhanced meat as a concept, but that it’s becoming more difficult to buy certain fresh meat products in their regular versions–and fresh, natural, conventional meat is what most barbeque enthusiasts are looking for. Fresh pork is the best example of this trend. In some supermarkets, most fresh pork products, including spare and loin back ribs, butts, picnics and loins, are available only as an enhanced pork product. The same cuts of meat are not offered in their regular versions. 4
You and I, in short, have no choice. The choice has been made for us.
Whether we like it or not, we are obliged to accept whatever the meat packer and supermarket chain have decided is the way our meat ought to be flavored. Matters of personal taste are ignored. Like clothes off a discount department store rack, “one size fits all,” and we can take it or leave it. If you like your meat with less pepper or salt than the chain has decided you should have, too bad. Big Brother knows best. Learn to love it.
And if your doctor has put you on a low- or no-salt diet due to high blood pressure or risk of heart disease, no matter. The corporate chain store has decreed that you must eat salt–or stop eating meat altogether. And bugger your health.
Die, or become a vegetarian.
There are, of course, some merits to the idea of being vegetarian. The majority Hindu population of India have been vegetarian for centuries and seem none the worse for it. They get their protein from other sources. But, damn it all, I’d like such a thing to be my choice, not the decision of some crew of corporate suits sitting in a boardroom somewhere with their accountants and advertising men and making up my mind for me! I’ll wager most Americans and Canadians, if they’d take the trouble to stop and think about it, would agree.
The fact is, I like pork chops. I like them flavored to my own taste, not to someone else’s. And I don’t want to be forced to stop eating them altogether if I should unexpectedly develop heart problems. And what about those other ingredients, “phosphates, antioxidants and flavorings”? What if I’m allergic to one of them? Will it even be listed on the package label to warn me? Under the current supermarket regime, not likely.
And why are meat packers and supermarket chains switching to “enhanced” meats? The Virtual Weber Bullet site gives a number of reasons, but the most persuasive (given the added expense and complication for the packer of installing injection heads, pressure controls, filters, flexible needle mounts, and separate shut-off controls for each injection needle used in the enhancement process) seems to be “increased profitability”:
By “adding value” to meat by enhancing it, meat producers can charge more for their products and achieve higher profits. Also, by solving the problems of color retention and purge, enhanced meat facilitates the trend toward case-ready meat—meat that is butchered and packaged at the meat packing plant so that it’s ready for display and sale in retail stores. Case-ready meat is more profitable for meat producers and for retailers, and it represents the future of meat in America—and the demise of your local butcher. 5
Nor is meat the only food product in which salt might be an issue. For decades, fast food retailers like McDonald’s have served french fries with a liberal dose of sodium chloride. But recently, the international chain has adopted a new stance, agreeing to remove large quantities of salt from its products in Britain, including from the oil its fries are prepared in.6 Each serving of burgers, ketchup, or fries will have up to 23 percent less salt than in the past.
WITCHES’ BREW
Moisture-enhanced