Tofu is looking better and better..

I eat a lot of Boca Burgers, which are soy based, quite filling, and good-tasting especially if they're "goosed up" with various condiments. I make sandwiches and spaghetti from them, and they can replace just about any recipe that calls for ground beef. Walmart sells them for $3.oo for about 14 ounces, very reasonable and even cheaper at Sam's.

If one worries about unsafe ground beef, remember that the USDA no longer inspects meat at slaughterhouses, except for spot checking. Plant employees now do the inspecting, but anybody with a bit of training can spot obviously diseased carcasses and viscera. The problem is that employees--illegal aliens--are on very shaky ground if they reject to much, and are subject to losing their jobs, which are just temporary in any one plant in any case.

Well, the whole inspection circle in the article made me very wary, but especially wary about packaged beef products made from trimmings (etc) from varied sources. Nevah, she says...

Bullshit. This kind of crap is just that, CRAP. I think you should be embarrassed by posting such crap.

Here's a tofu-based food that I think actually tastes good:



They are delicious! I wonder what percentage of these babies is actually tofu though.

If you are worried about E Coli, buy a 5-pound brisket, grind it yourself, and use that as ground beef. Tastes fantastic and only takes a couple of minutes.

We put garlic and ginger and onion salt in ours most of the time, you don't even have to do a damn thing to the patties, just thaw and cook.

Cycloptichorn

Put one on a plate. If it doesn't melt in a few hours, it is a very high percentage.

I agree. I just recently learned that brisket grinds to great hamburger. Now I need a meat grinder, having given my mother's away a long time ago. But I have a good butcher and mostly buy their meat, ground on site.

This thread is really about the system of inspection for packaged supermarket ground beef (which I am myself not quite as worried about as inspection of ground beef from combined sources that is smushed into ready made patties - but, in either case, inspection seems problematic, and the culture of inspection or the economic practices (for example, sources not selling to a company that would also inspect, in fear of the first company being blackballed if their meat is found to be contaminated).

I don't know about the fear level that any of the employees have, or don't, relative to their immigration status. All employees might have a reluctance to stop the line.. I think management practices would be the problem, and those practices are probably for economic reasons.

My own sense is that some **** goes through the processing as it is hard to catch just a little bit by visualization. Not all excretory contamination contains pathogenic e. coli.

Also, that one line or two in the article about 80% failure to identify rate among labs really through me, did I read that right? (I used to work at the bacti bench in a lab, although a long time ago, and find that hard to understand. Maybe the lab procedures in the first place are at fault, but I've no idea.)

Adds, I wonder if JPB has read the article - I'd like to hear her take (will pm)

Hi osso,

No, I hadn't read it. It really all comes down to this one statement.



Americans demand cheap products (not just cheap hamburger), but they also demand that these cheap product be safe. They think the federal agencies such as the USDA or the FDA are out there keeping them safe. That's not exactly true. Federal agencies report to Congress and, as we all know, Congress doesn't always just have the American consumer in mind as it gives direction to the various inspection/licensing agencies.

As Dr Petersen indicates, public health is just one component of what needs to come into play when the agencies establish policies. As you can see in the article, many of these policies are reactionary. The meat industry was given voluntary recommendations by the USDA. Many chose not to implement the recommendations. There's also a "don't ask, don't tell" mentality within the meat-packing industry (as well as many other 'regulated' industries) and they'd rather insure against individual litigation than implement expensive changes to their procedures and processes. If the number of incident cases becomes high enough then the federal agencies will strengthen their guidelines and, in some cases, upgrade recommendations to mandates. Once a policy or process is mandated the cost of implementation is passed on to the consumer. And, I strongly believe that the average consumer would rather eat cheap hamburger and take their chances on not becoming the subject of an investigative news article than pay the cost of government mandates on the meat packing industry.

I'll also add that ground beef has been known to be a high risk product when not fully cooked. And yet we continue to eat undercooked hamburger - sometimes unintentionally, but oftentimes not.

"Consumer Beware" and "Proceed at your own risk" used to mean something. We've gotten lazy in our own practices and then look to law suits and scream at the regulators when we don't follow recommended practices (one of my own soapbox issues).

BTW, my favorite way to eat tofu is Ma Po Bean Curd and I seldom eat hamburger, but my daughter eats little else.

Thanks for the rounded view on the inspection situation.

I like Tofu very much. There are a lot of methods to cook Tofu. My favorite one is Tofu+Crab soup. It is very delicious.

That is interesting, Rachel. What else is in the soup besides crab and tofu?

My mother is good at making this soup. It tastes great. I only know some basic process. The Tofu is cut into cubes and the crab is cut into pieces. She always make some soup with seasoning (including garlic) at first, then put those pieces of crab and Tofu into it respectively. There might be 3 minutes space between the order crab and Tofu. A moment later, she will put two pieces of hot pepper into it. Then the soup is ok. ahah......I like sea food.

That is how I would cook it too. I might add some fish sauce to the broth.

Ordinarily I wouldn't reply to out of control negative responses and histrionics, but it's a fact that the USDA has an extremely limited function in slaughterhouses, which probably started during the Reagan period. When I served in the Army in the early 60's I spent a week in a Swift plant in Chicago working (sort of) alongside USDA inspectors. They were very thorough, slicing lymph nodes in every beef head and checking carcasses and viscera. USDA inspectors are very upset now because of their extremely limited role. For a good account of the history of beef including modern inspection practices read, "Beyond Beef" by Jeremy Rifkin.

Tofu, as such, is not a replacement for ground beef as Boca Burgers are, but it does have its uses. It's especially good in scrambled eggs and stir fry vegetables.

I use it in miso soup too - not that I eat a lot of that, but once in a while - with slivered scallions, thin sliced mushroom.....

yeah of course, historonics often provide accurate information.