And now we know:
Too bad that all this has come at a time when I can’t afford to buy the lovely stuff… but I guess I can always cut something from the budget (like a Netflix subscription) to get more meat.
And yes, I know I can’t afford the gas to get to the supermarket, either. Which is why my apartment is walking distance from not one but two of them.
And now, if you’ll excuse me…
My wife does all the grocery shopping and has been trying to save money while still getting the stuff we like. I’ve noticed the last several times we’ve had steak the “type” of steak was a bit, well, different. For example, she had a package of “strip steak” that kinda sorta looked like NY strip, but when closely examined the cut, the grain, the fat, was not correct. It was tougher than strip and didn’t cook as well. Previously there was a four pack of smaller steaks (family pack) that was just labelled “steak”. Not any particular kind of steak, just “steak”. And again, the cut was wrong and the grain was wrong and it was tough as old shoe leather. I know how to grill a steak and haven’t ruined one in decades, but this shit was shit.
Methinks the old grocery store is selling off-cuts as steaks in order to offer something, anything, in a more affordable price range. And it sucks. Badly. I told her I’d rather eat less steak such that when we do, we can actually afford to buy the good stuff. She told me I could get my ass to the store and buy it myself, so I guess I’m off to HEB tomorrow morning.
Of course red meat isn’t bad for you, it’s the fuzzy blue-green meat that’s bad for you.
Eh? They’re making red bacon now?
.
Do what I do – buy a whole (butchered) cow, stick it in the freezer, and eat on that for a year. Cheaper than storebought, and tastes better too.
Note a key word here: “unprocessed”. Most alleged food scientists lump unprocessed red meat (steaks, roasts, hamburger, and un-cured pork and sausage) together with all kinds of processed meat (hot dogs, ham, bacon, cured sausage, anything “smoked”, etc.) as “red meat”. They avoid distinguishing whatever risk there may be from different processes, or from any processing versus no processing. (Sometimes that may be a difference between “added carcinogens” and “no added carcinogens”.) Now at last there are studies covering no processing – and the only danger seems to be from eating so much you get fat, or if the meat crowds out the vegetables.
A lot of the processing involves adding potential carcinogens. Smoke is a carcinogen if you inhale enough into your lungs. It’s not so clear about smoked meat, because the smoke doesn’t reach sensitive lung tissue when you eat it, and there have been few studies of this alone. (One hopeful indicator: Most unprocessed meat is grilled or sauteed until brown, which I expect leaves substances similar to smoke, and this study implies little or no danger if the meat isn’t too charred.) Then there are the “smoked” meats (all the cheap bacon, ham, and cured sausage) that never saw a smokehouse, but went through a faster and cheaper curing process of adding nitrates or other chemicals. Nitrates clearly can be carcinogenic, but again there’s a lack of studies designed to show hazards from these as applied to fake-smoke meat versus other processes and unprocessed meat.
And then there’s whatever they do to hot dogs. Even the expensive ones don’t even taste like meat to me. How could that be good for you?
They no longer need to claim it’s “bad for you”, they now have the far more effective claim (for the current political climate) that “it’s bad for the environment” and that “it’s animal cruelty”.
Far more likely to convince the brainwashed millenials.