Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers! enhanced meat

[Guest guest]

My public service announcement for the day: if you shop at Wal-Mart, you might benefit from reading this article from the NY Times. Here's the condensed takeaway (bolded points are mine):The Customer Wants a Juicy Steak? Just Add Water

By MARIAN BURROS

Published: August 9, 2006

EACH day it's becoming less likely that the meat you buy in the supermarket is just meat. After spending years breeding cattle, pigs and

poultry to be leaner, the food industry has been injecting meat with water, salt and chemicals to replace the flavor and restore the tenderness that was lost with the fat...The increased use of enhancement, which can quadruple the amount of sodium in meat, has coincided with calls by health professionals for the food industry to reduce much of the sodium it adds to food...Meats

are naturally low in sodium. But nutrition labels for enhanced meat show that they can have as much as 540 milligrams of sodium in a four-ounce portion...Along with salt and water, the process can add chemicals like sodium phosphate, which helps the meat retain the added water when it is cooked, and sodium lactate or

potassium lactate to extend the shelf life by inhibiting bacteria... The department requires any meat product with added liquid to be clearly labeled with language such as "beef tenderloin with up to 15 percent added solution'' or "boneless chicken breast with up to 20 percent of a flavoring solution of water, spices, sugar and phosphates,'' said

Cohen, a spokesman for the agency. The label must also have a nutrition-facts panel... But the labeling I saw was in very small type and often in an obscure place. The labels on some Cryovac packages of enhanced spareribs were in a folded-over portion of the packaging. On

some meat products it is not there at all... Many

people have no choice about whether to eat enhanced meat. Custom-cut meat is being rapidly replaced in supermarkets by case-ready meat, enhanced and packaged by processors... Wal-Mart, for example, says

a majority of its fresh offerings are enhanced with a 6 to 12 percent solution of water, salt, sodium phosphate and natural flavorings.