What’s a hungry carnivore to do when a sudden craving for meat hits at an inconvenient hour? If you’re lucky enough to live in Paris, you can now visit a meat vending machine that dispenses steaks and sausages 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And if you don’t live in Paris yet, we’re moving there and could use some roommates. [More]
meat
Chipotle May Change Some Of Its Food-Safety Changes Back
By 3.16.16
After outbreaks of Salmonella, norovirus, and E. coli that made hundreds of diners sick, burrito eatery Chipotle made some changes to its food-handling practices, which included processing more food in central “canteen” facilities, adding lemon juice to chopped vegetables, and testing all of their ingredients for pathogens. While facing low sales and an expensive food giveaway, Chipotle is considering maybe rolling some of those changes back. [More]
DNA Analysis Shows Legendary Explorers Club Dinner Didn’t Actually Include Woolly Mammoth Or Giant Sloth
By 2.3.16
In the days before DNA testing and the Internet, it was possible to get away with telling people you’re serving them prehistoric animals for dinner. Not so much now, as scientific research has shown that a legendary Explorers Club dinner from 1951 that offered “prehistoric meats” didn’t really serve members giant sloth, as the menu had it, or woolly mammoth, as legend had it. [More]
Meat’s On Sale At Target: Raise Prices By 30 Cents
By 1.14.16
Target CEO Brian Cornell came from the food business, having worked for companies like Safeway, Sam’s Club, and PepsiCo before joining the big-box discounter in 2014. Since then, he’s been working to make groceries at Target better, experimenting with delivery and more fresh and minimally processed food instead of cans and snacks. For example, there’s this nice selection of ground beef that Michael wanted to buy, which is even on sale this week. No… wait a minute, that’s not right. [More]
Police: Father & Son Team Stole $41K Worth Of Chicken Wings From Their Employer
By 12.8.15
Some days you just need to start off with some news about meat theft, and today is one of those occasions: a father and son team near Syracuse, NY have been accused by police of pilfering about $40,000 worth of chicken wings from the restaurant where they both worked as cooks. Update: the dad in this duo had committed prior crimes against meat. Last year. [More]
Subway Will Switch To All Antibiotic-Free Meat By 2025
By 10.20.15
Subway, a fast food chain that serves sandwich-like objects, has a problem: it has a restaurant on just about every street corner, and marketed itself with the slogan “Eat Fresh.” Yet its competitors are following trends, and people want food with simpler ingredients and fewer additives, and meat and dairy raised with fewer antibiotics. Today, Subway announced a policy change that’s good for public health: serving meat raised without routine antibiotic use by 2016 for chicken, and 2025 for beef and pork. [More]
West Virginia Supermarkets Dealing With Spike In Meat Thefts
By 10.15.15
Here at Consumerist, we have a slight obsession with stories in the news about people attempting to steal meat by shoving it down their pants, a crime that is simultaneously sad and hilarious. Now there’s a report out of Charleston, West Virginia that the city is experiencing a meat-theft epidemic, with supermarket employees patrolling the shelves. [More]
Want To Buy Your Beef In Bulk But Don’t Have The Freezer Space? Consider The Meat Locker
By 9.23.15
American are used to the concept of buying in bulk now, carting home everything from economy tubs of peanut butter to crates of toilet paper. But although it’d be cheaper per pound to buy, say, half a cow at once instead of different cuts here and there, the problem of buying meat in bulk is that it takes up a whole lot of room in the freezer, space many people just don’t have. That’s where rentable meat lockers come in. [More]
Man Spotted Shoving Pork Tenderloin Down His Pants
By 9.15.15
Here’s another story from the meat-down-pants beat: last week, a man was caught at a Wisconsin co-op grocery store with a pork tenderloin and two sandwiches stuffed down his pants. He told police that he shoplifted the items because he was homeless and hungry. He received a citation for retail theft and, one hopes, a referral to a place that could provide him with something to eat. [La Crosse Tribune] [More]
The Backyard Barbecue Isn’t As Popular As It Used To Be
By 9.4.15
Though visions of hamburgers and hotdogs may be dancing through your head as we approach the Labor Day holiday weekend, the heyday of the backyard barbecue has come and gone, some say, partly because of the high price of beef. [More]
Two Men, Two Colostomy Bags, Two Shoplifting Accusations, Three Steaks, One Arrest, One Apology
By 8.13.15
Two men on different continents who have similar medical problems and have undergone the same surgery, and recent trips to these ended poorly for both of them. They both have colostomies, and store employees mistook both of their bags for stolen merchandise and became suspicious. The difference: one of them men was allegedly trying to leave the store with $75 worth of steak stuffed in his colostomy bag, and the other was innocent. [More]
Hormel Gobbling Up Applegate Farms For $775M
By 5.27.15
In a sign of the times, Hormel Foods Corp., the maker of Spam, is trying for that natural foods feeling and has decided that buying Applegate Farms for $775 million is the way to achieve it. [More]
Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. Slaps A Hot Dog & Potato Chips On A Cheeseburger, Calls It “Most American Thickburger”
By 5.14.15
When it comes to stacking meat-upon-meat, pretty much nothing surprises us these days. So a hot dog on a hamburger? Pretty much inevitable (see: bacon on hamburgers). Adding potato chips? Sure, why not get it all done with at once. That’s the lineup for the Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s upcoming Most American Thickburger. [More]
Mechanically Tenderized Beef To Finally Be Labeled
By 5.13.15
More than a quarter of all beef sold in the U.S. is mechanically tenderized, meaning that machines with tiny little blades have been used to make the raw product more tender. But this step can also have the effect of driving surface pathogens deeper into the meat where they might not be killed during the cooking process. Since 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has received reports of six outbreaks attributable to these products. Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was going to require labels for mechanically tenderized beef. Those labeling rules have now been finalized and will go into effect a year from now. [More]
Community Furious That School Cafeterias Served Smelly 6-Year-Old Pork To Kids
By 5.1.15
You might not take your kids all that seriously when they complain about the gross mystery meat served in their school cafeteria, but the children in some schools in Hawkins County, Tennessee had a right to complain last week when they were served pork that had been sitting in the freezer since 2009. [More]
How Did The Hot Dog Get Such A Bad Rap?
By 4.1.15
When I was but a wee MBQ, I’d often sit in front of the refrigerator when no one was watching and eat hot dogs straight out of the package. “Gasp!” friends would later say when I recalled that guilty pleasure. “Do you even know what’s in hot dogs?” That widespread urban caveat of hot dogs as tubes of mystery meat has persisted, but is there anything actually scary about the contents of a hot dog? [More]
Shoplifter Arrested After Shoving Steak Down His Pants
By 3.17.15
A 53-year-old man in Arkansas was arrested last week for shoplifting. His crime was one that has long fascinated us here at Consumerist: he is accused of trying to steal steaks from a Food Giant grocery store by shoving them down his pants. While this might seem like a logical and delicious enough crime, it’s also kind of a noticeable one. Also, no one will want to eat the meat. [More]
5 Things We Learned Today About What It’s Like To Gather And Eat Roadkill
By 3.10.15
Though the idea of eating something that’s been run over by a car and left on the side of the road might turn even some of the strongest of stomaches, the fact remains that there’s a lot of meat at stake, and there are those out there who are more than willing to pick up what others might not want and turn it into a tasty stew. But while you might be imagining a clumsy shovel and buzzing fly situation, in reality, says one avid roadkill aficionado, it’s a lot different. [More]
