Govt. Feeding Schoolkids ‘Soylent Pink’

John Seiler:

Our colleague Dave Roberts today reported on how the California Legislature might ban food trucks within 1,500 feet of schools. The trucks are selling stuff kids like — burritos and burgers — instead of the tastless slop First Lady Michelle Obama insists they subsist on.

(Even though her hubby, the prez, doesn’t follow her guidelines. How does Barack stay thin? The old fashioned way: cigarettes.)

But what’s in that glop they serve kids in public schools? TheDaily.com reports:

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s continued purchase of so-called pink slime for school lunches makes no sense, according to two former microbiologists at the Food Safety Inspection Service.

“‘I have a 2-year-old son,’ microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein told The Daily. ‘And you better believe I don’t want him eating pink slime when he starts going to school.’

“It was Zirnstein who first coined the term ‘pink slime’ after touring a Beef Products Inc. production facility in 2002 as part of an investigation into salmonella contamination in packaged ground beef. In an email to his colleagues shortly after the visit, Zirnstein said he did not ‘consider the stuff to be ground beef.’

“Made by grinding together connective tissue and beef scraps normally destined for dog food and rendering, BPI’s Lean Beef Trimmings are then treated with ammonia hydroxide, a process that kills pathogens such as salmonella and E. coli.”

“The resulting pinkish substance is later blended into traditional ground beef and hamburger patties.”

I wish I hadn’t just had lunch. I’m getting queasy just reading about what the government is shoving down our kids’ gullets.

“‘For retired microbiologist Carl Custer, a 35-year veteran of the Food Safety Inspection Service, the idea of mixing in BPI’s Lean Beef Trimmings into more nutritious, pure ground beef was itself problematic.

“’We originally called it soylent pink,’ Custer told The Daily. ‘We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat’.”

“Soylent Pink.” There, he said it.

That’s a reference to the classic 1973 Sci Fi movie, “Soylent Green,” in which Charlton Heston discovers — spoiler alert! — that a special food the government is feeding everybody is made of …

…let’s let Charlton tell us…

 

March 9, 2012