WHY ARE WE BUYING MEAT FROM THE STORE!?

I have to be honest with you. If you would have asked me six years ago what we thought about homesteading we would have looked at you dumb founded. We would have probably said oh you mean a farmer right. Sadly we were the people that knew for a fact that your meat came from the store and it was perfectly safe for you to eat. There was no way that the company’s that sold their meat to the store would put any thing harmful in there food for you to eat. Our mind set was why would they do that it would just hurt their business.

Boy how we were wrong! We were so blinded by the big corporations. We really did believe them when they said their products were safe to eat. Thankfully we have come to know about MSG’s and the chemicals that are pumped into the food. Some examples of them are Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Proprionate, Benzoic Acid, Ractopamine, Heavy Metals, LMP 102, and Transglutaminase just to name a few that gives the meat its plumpness, color, and allows it to stay fresher in the stores longer. But that’s a whole other post in its self.

Have you ever wondered why the meat in stores is always bright red? Are they red because they were butchered that day? Anyone that knows meat or knows a butcher knows that’s not true. Meat will set on the cooler shelf in a store for an average of four days or more!

I dare any one out their to get fresh meat from lets say a cow that was just killed. Take that meat and put it in your refrigerator for four days. Do not open the refrigerator because we don’t want the temperature to drop in any way. On the 5th day open the refrigerator and tell me what color that meat is. I’m guessing it will be a brown color or almost gray color. Why is that? Well it changes like that because the blood starts to drain from the meat and because bacteria start to set in on the meat. But how do the stores keep their meat looking so fresh for the world to see? What is their trick?

I am so glad that you asked that! Their trick is that they use poisonous Carbon Monoxide Gas! It can make seriously decayed meat look fresh again! The sad truth is many people do not know that more than 70% of all beef and chicken in the United States is being treated with Carbon Monoxide Gas.

But what is Carbon Monoxide Gas?
Carbon monoxide (often referred to as CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas, one measly oxygen molecule away from the carbon dioxide we all exhale. CO is toxic because it sticks to hemoglobin, a molecule in blood that usually carries oxygen, even better than oxygen can. When people are exposed to higher levels of CO, the gas takes the place of oxygen in the bloodstream and wreaks havoc. Milder exposures mean headaches, confusion, and tiredness. Higher exposures mean unconsciousness and death, and even those who survive CO poisoning can suffer serious long-term neurological consequences.

I know that there are people out their a lot smarter than I am. But I can’t help but think to myself if the smart people out there know what Carbon Monoxide Gas is then why would they think that it is ok to use in food?

So with a lot of research I found out that the meat industry had to come up with a way to handle the struggles with temperature consistency from there place and the supermarket shelves. That is when atmospheric packaging was developed. Atmospheric packaging is when meat is exposed to carbon monoxide; it reacts with the myoglobin in the blood giving the meat a bright red color. Fresh beef is naturally red, and as it ages, it becomes brown or grey. The carbon monoxide keeps it looking artificially fresh for up to a full year by restricting the growth of bacteria that proliferate from the increased heat of supermarket meat display cases. Can you believe that you could get meat that is a year old!

But the question still remains is Carbon Monoxide dangerous if it is ingested? Don’t worry the meat industry has it all under control and in a article that I read they said unlike inhalation, carbon monoxide is not harmful when it is ingested via meat treated with atmospheric packaging. They even had a lawyer with a legal firm for the meat industry, says consumers needn’t worry about fake red supermarket meat. She even went on to say and I quote “ When a product reaches the point of spoilage, there will be other signs that will be evident other than color like odor, slim, and bulging packages. So the product will not smell or look right. But that is not our concern. We concern our self’s with being able to sell the oldest meat possible by making it look fresh. This way the meat industry does not lose out on money.”

Did that really just come out of her mouth? Well needless to say I’m sure she no longer represent the meat industry any more.

I’m just going to say it people. The big companies are not on our side they never have been. We need to take back as much power from them as we can. In this case it would be to try and raise what ever meat we can. You can grow chickens in small back yard. We need to take our health back into our hands and the only way to do that is to raise or grow our own food.