(kmacp)
For those of you who ever wondered how much fat was going into your body after downing a few burgers at the cookout, or how many calories are in that gigantor T-bone steak, you’ll be glad to know nutritional labels will now be on almost all packaged meat products.
Reuters says the new Department of Agriculture rule starts Thursday for 40 popular brands of whole, raw cuts, meat or poultry. Lablels will include calories, total fat and saturated fat for each offering.
Products boasting how lean they are that aren’t actually considered low in fat will have fat percentages listed so you can see really how much fat is included per serving.
Other packaged foods have required nutrition labels since 1993 for anything that isn’t raw or contains more than one ingredient. So, it’s about time we started looking exactly at what we’re ingesting, especially if you’re eyeing up that third burger. No judgment!
Nutrition labels now on meat packages [Reuters]
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I’m happy to hear this. I sometimes have a hard time finding the nutritional info on specific cuts of meats.
But isn’t a lot of this nutrition info going to change once the meat is cooked?
Yes, especially the fat content, and that depends on cooking method and max temperature achieved before consumed. I’d much rather have the ammonia content (or whatever crazy ass chemical they’re using to keep that color nice and red) listed.
Walmart keeps its frankenmeat ruby red in those weirdly bulging packages by replacing the air inside with nitrogen. No oxygen, no discoloration.
Yes, the meat could be rotten with anaerobic bacteria chowing down… but by God, it will look pretty days after its sell-by date.
If it is anaerobic you will damn well know if it has been chowing down…
Only after you open it.
I believe Food Lion started this.
Walmart sells meat?
Ewwww.
I cook with meat form there. It’s no different from anywhere else.
i don’t really care… when cook that steak, I put some butter on top at the end and I enjoy it.
chicken .. my s.o. eat most of the skin…
bacon… yummmy fat.
What a shining comment of substance..
It was dripping with luscious, satisfying details and finished clean with a subtle hint of bullshit.
^^ ditto… But some people do care.
And yes the nutrition, particularly the fat content, changes when meat is cooked. Of course we’ll probably never know of the info is for pre-cooked or cooked meat.
The variation in cuts will result in the labels being nearly meaningless. On the same shelf, I can find ribeyes that vary in fat percentage by at least 10%. There’s no uniformity; the best they can do is an average.
I dont know how they can make these facts accurately. When they make ground beef they usually just use scraps and meat. I dont see how they can possibly make the exact same mixture every time and never have the nutrition info change.
Just a thought….
If you are making ground beef the traditional way, that is, scraps of beef from the same cow, I can see your point. Cows are going to vary slightly in terms of health, age, fat content, etc.
But when you consider how ground beef is made today — scraps from thousands of cows all mixed together – you probably develop an “average” mixture that is pretty consistent.
I’m basing this notion on the idea of probability. You cannot predict where an individual grain of sand will go, but I do know if a drop a stream of sand, it will always form a cone-shaped pile.
Actually I believe they can. Big meat processors follow a specific formula for the different grades of ground meat. Ever looked at the nutrition info for a McDonald’s burger? I’d bet my house that those numbers are correct every single time.
I dont believe any of the grocery stores around me use meat from large processors. I know for a fact that they receive their meat in large pieces in Cryovac that the on-site butcher then cuts into steaks and roasts. Then they actually grind the hamburger from the scraps and other tough cuts of meat with the on-site grinder. If this law applies to places like this and independent butchers, then I think it’s BS. If it only applies to large meat producing corporations who have set mixes, then fine.
They do science to it.
Fat and lean have different densities. Weigh a specific volume and you know the mixture rate.
Is it bad that I feel ridiculously privileged to have a real honest-to-goodness butcher near me that charges only slightly more than 1 grocery store and less than all the rest in the area?
What about Pink slime. Will they have to tell me if they’re using that crap?