Secret of Fresh Meat: Carbon Monoxide!

Posted by Alex in Food & Drinks on March 12, 2006 at 2:02 am


If you ever buy a cut of meat at your friendly neighborhood supermarket, you should but may not want to read this.

OK - so, which steak is older? It’s a trick question, they were bought at the same day but the one on top was packaged in an airtight container with a touch of carbon monoxide to keep it stay red for weeks!

This form of "modified atmosphere packaging," a technique in which other gases replace oxygen, has become more widely used as supermarkets eliminate their butchers and buy precut, "case-ready" meat from processing plants.

Link (via Dr. Beeper)



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COMMENT

8 comments to "Secret of Fresh Meat: Carbon Monoxide!"

  1. John Anderson
    March 12th, 2006 at 3:45 pm

    It has been noted elsewhere that this info is from a company that makes an older competing product, CO2 has itself been around for quite a while, and the FDA says it is not a problem after about 20 years of use.

  2. David
    March 12th, 2006 at 11:19 pm

    CO2 isn’t the issue. Deceptive marketing practices is.

  3. Arlo
    March 13th, 2006 at 2:17 am

    Just “CO” guys. :) :) :)

  4. David
    March 13th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

    See? CO2 really isn’t the issue.

  5. Ron
    March 13th, 2006 at 7:11 pm

    Hemoglobin (the stuff in blood that carries oxygen to all of your bits) and myoglobin (the same stuff, only in muscles {ie meat}) has a greater affinity for CO than oxygen. Bad for breathing, good for nice looking steaks I guess.

  6. mercedes
    April 5th, 2006 at 10:12 am

    not only is using this gas deceptive, what about what it does to the flavor of the meats? wal-mart sells this crap , its tasteless!

  7. Bim
    April 5th, 2006 at 9:07 pm

    no commment

  8. j ancion
    April 24th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

    I am about to become a vegetarian. Meat these days is absolute crap. I am on a sodium restricted diet and cannot even find chicken that isnt laced with salt. I guess I am going to have to raise my own livestock, but then we would make pets out of them and not want to kill them to eat. I suspected something funky with the case ready meats when I observed the packages were pressurized and commented at the time that they were probably pumped full of some gas. I wonder if its is safe to drive after you’ve eated a CO steak ?


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