Injected meat

[Emeira]

few weeks ago I have started eating more raw beef or slow cooked chicken, but both meats are from regular supermarket. My concern is all substances the food industry is plumping "injecting" into the meat. Making meat or seafood to absorb a significant quantity of water.

(Phosphate Use in Meat Products – Phosphates are used in meat products for several reasons. The principle reason being increased yields, which is accomplished by raising the pH of the meat protein, which in turn allows the protein to hold more water. This principle is referred to as increasing the water holding capacity of meat. Phosphates are alkaline in nature and, when added to meat, cause an increase in pH. Most phosphates are sodium based, but you can buy potassium phosphate if sodium content is a concern. Note that, as with salt, the potassium phosphate is bitter in flavor. The most commonly used phosphate is Sodium Tripolyphosphate (STP) ... )
http://www.nassaufoods.com/index.php?co ... sresources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRGRhbscNc

So, how bad regarding health is to eat meats with injected stuff? Especially when the meat is raw. Should I avoid it all together and stick only to what I can afford atm: free range farmers chickens egg yolks and slow cooked whites. I want good quality of protein to increase muscle tone, eggs (yolks and whites) are the only protein source (here where I live) that looks safe and healthiest to me.

[Aytundra]

I was interested in looking at % ratios of protein : fats : phosphorus : cholesterol,
after seeing Oscar's post on things that lipo-protein carries of % protein : triglycerides : phospholipid : cholesterol.
(see thread: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1038&p=10827&hilit ... ons#p10827 )

The Anses Table Ciqual 2013 French Food Composition Table (Source of data : https://pro.anses.fr/TableCIQUAL/index.htm) does not contain "triglycerides" and "phospholipid" data, so I had to make do with fats (g) and phosphorus (mg).

It was interesting to see Salt as 100% phosphorus in that ratio:

What does salt look like to Chylomicrons..JPG

It is interesting to see that salt as a food item is not a source of protein, fats or cholesterol.
Assuming lipoproteins only see food items as things that they carry of a ratio % protein : triglycerides : phospholipid : cholesterol.
I can imagine that lipoproteins in the perspective of chylomicrons might see salt as a phosphorus thing.


Note: - Obviously I am making a big assumption that phosphorus is representative of phospholipids, and secondly, I am making a big assumption that the amount of salt consumed is 100 grams of salt.

- In this exercise though of creating protein-fat-phosphorus-cholesterol-percent-ratios I did notice that food items (meats, fruits, vegetables, grains) are spread out in percentages closer to chylomicrons than to the percentages of HDL LDL and VLDL. Hence this may suggest that redistribution of protein-fat-phospholipid-cholesterol ratios occur after absorption of food items prior to HDL LDL and VLDL, perhaps in the liver?

[RRM]

So, how bad regarding health is to eat meats with injected stuff?

That depends on the nature of what is injected.
Phosphates in meat are relatively harmless.

Especially when the meat is raw.

Whether the meat is raw, or not, usually does not make any difference.
Only when the added ingredients (eg fructose, nitrogen) contribute to the origination of bad stuff due to cooking, then the addition is only potentially bad in cooked foods, not raw foods.

Should I avoid it all together

I dont think that is necessary

[RRM]

Obviously I am making a big assumption that phosphorus is representative of phospholipids

That assumption is incorrect, in as much as cholesterol is not representative of testosterone,
and that dietary fat is not representative of phospholipids.
The phosphorus taken up into the blood is merely to some extend incorporated into phospholipids (as are fatty acids), as a structural component in cell membranes (phospholipid synthesis in the cytosole).
A (usually saturated) fatty acyl-CoA plus glycerol 3-phosphate (eg phosphorylated glycerol) yields phosphatidic acid.
Phosphatidic acid is the basis for the formation of various phospholipids

[Kasper]

I always take organic meat. I really don't trust commercial meat at all, and I don't like the taste.

Commercial meats leaks much more water than organic meat (from my own experience), so in some sense organic meat is a bit cheaper than it seems, because it contains less water. Chemicals such as trisodium phosphate are used because they stimulate swelling and water retention. Also, they use ozone and hydrogen peroxide to deodorize meat.

Anyway, I just don't trust it, they do anything to make extra profit, and if that means making the animal so stressed (before slaughter), so that it swells up completely, and makes more profit, than some farmers will do it.

[Aytundra]

Injecting, isn't that a processing method?
I don't trust raw meats that have been sliced in a processing plant to be consumed raw.
Sliced meat in processing plants can be exposed to high volumes of bacteria accidentally.
If they use the same machinery, needle to inject the meat, and it is reused on other meats again without proper cleaning, than if it touches one highly contaminated item, then it can cause a large batch of meat to be contaminated. Random sampling to catch bacterial outbreaks before the product goes on shelves might prevent cases like these. But not all sampling catches all bacterial outbreaks. Look at all the salad, veggies, meat recalls in the U.S.A. those are often due to incidents happening in processing plants.

Ozone and hydrogen peroxide as an additional measure to adding salt might decimate bacterial populations in a processing plant, and is probably one of the primary reasons why it is used on meats (meanwhile telling consumers it is for the plumper taste or something innocent like that).

Processing plants often are met with the challenge of processing many meats at once.
It only takes one piece of meat that has been accidentally exposed to the guts of the animal's interior like the ecoli in cow's guts, or the salmonella or listeria on some diseased animal or surface to mess up the processing plant's machinery's surface and create incidents of bacterial outbreaks and cross-contaminations if it processes different types of meat on the same machinery.

Raw Meats / Undercooked meats: I would be more worried about the bacterial contamination than the sodium tripolyphosphate.

[Novidez]

I always take organic meat. I really don't trust commercial meat at all, and I don't like the taste.

I don't know, Portugal must be really poor. Here in Oporto, I can't find any single place selling organic meat. It's just impossible: or you may be lucky and know a farmer, then you can buy meat from him; or you have your own animals and make your own meat; or you simply have to buy them non-organic.
Unless, you order it from the Internet... Do you?

[Kasper]

Oh, the Netherlands is full of organic meat shops. I think there are like 3 in a radius of 3km of my house.