Mechanically seperated Chicken ?

[Justin Case]

Have you ever wondered what exactly "Mechanically Separated Chicken" was ?
We see it on slim jim wrappers, amd other snacks and foods,
Well, Wonder no More ,
http://gizmodo.com/5654066/

[Rick]

I understand hand separate chicken is blue.

[Justin Case]

OOPS !!! Snopes has something else to say about this > http://snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp

[BENESSE]

That's why I'm a vegetarian.
Less to keep track of.

[Ole WV Coot]

Nothing new, McDonalds has chucked whole chickens in a wood chipper to make their Chicken McNuggets for years.

[klickitat]

When I was in high school I had a class mate that worked at the livestock auction in The Dalles, OR. There was a McDonald's buyer that showed up every week and bought the cheapest of the cheap beef. He typically would pick up the old and crippled along with his favorite cows with cancer eye ( a bacterial infection of the eye that caused the face to rot off) he could typically pick these up for $5 and would never pay more than $100 for a cow. This was back in the mid to late 80's.

[your_comforting_company]

My BIL has a cow that had the same thing.. got the whole cow for $15, full grown.

As for the chicken.. meat is meat. Round here, Spam is something like a delicacy; must be 100 recipes for just spam. Mechanically seperated or not, some of that stuff is really good! This goes back to being "picky eaters".. is it really that different from mechanically seperated beef? (slim jim anyone?, how about a big mac?) Whether you use a machine to mash it all up, or you use two rocks, people the world over have been "seperating" their meat for jerky snacks/ trail food for eons.
They were also known to eat innards.. so it's really not a big deal to me; like I said, we eat spam! lol

[Rick]

I have less trouble with the meat than I do the breading they wrap it in and the deep fryer the whole product gets dropped into.

[BENESSE]

The only good thing about deep frying is that it kills the bacteria that comes from feces and god knows what else.
Either way, you're gonna pay.

[Justin Case]

Just about anything deep fried tastes good,, they are doing it with everything now, Snickers bars, Jelly beans,, Even Twinkies Rick !

[Winnie]

Scottish Delicacy....... Mars Bar, coated in batter and deep fried. In fact any chocolate bar coated in batter and deep fried, is considered a delicacy. The other Scottish Delicacy is the Scotch Pie. That has just about anything in it, from ahem "meat" to lasagne, macaroni cheese, beans, if it fits in a pie crust they've done it.

[Justin Case]

Scottish Delicacy....... Mars Bar, coated in batter and deep fried. In fact any chocolate bar coated in batter and deep fried, is considered a delicacy. The other Scottish Delicacy is the Scotch Pie. That has just about anything in it, from ahem "meat" to lasagne, macaroni cheese, beans, if it fits in a pie crust they've done it.

Mmmm,, sounds GOOD !

[finallyME]

This is why I don't like eating anything fast food. Ok, actually the reason is that my body tells me that I am a moron if I eat it (I get sick right after if I eat anything from any fast food restaurant). I think it has something to do with my upbringing. My parents were never that rich, so we ate out maybe 2 or 3 times a year. My mom did all the cooking and made almost everything from scratch. Obviously being poor meant that they spoiled us kids with real food. In the army, I was amazed when given the choice, people would choose McDonald's over the chow hall. The chow hall had real food, and it was free. And then I watched that documentary "Super Size Me". Just more reason to avoid the place. Now I just have to convince my family that a rabbit we raised is better eating than a chicken nugget.

[Winnie]

This is why I don't like eating anything fast food. Ok, actually the reason is that my body tells me that I am a moron if I eat it (I get sick right after if I eat anything from any fast food restaurant). I think it has something to do with my upbringing. My parents were never that rich, so we ate out maybe 2 or 3 times a year. My mom did all the cooking and made almost everything from scratch. Obviously being poor meant that they spoiled us kids with real food. In the army, I was amazed when given the choice, people would choose McDonald's over the chow hall. The chow hall had real food, and it was free. And then I watched that documentary "Super Size Me". Just more reason to avoid the place. Now I just have to convince my family that a rabbit we raised is better eating than a chicken nugget.

Cheat! Put the rabbit meat through a mincer(grinder?) and make your own "chicken" nuggets

[Justin Case]

Cheat! Put the rabbit meat through a mincer(grinder?) and make your own "chicken" nuggets

LOL,,, "Rabbit Nuggets" ?

[Rick]

I've seen rabbit nuggets on the ground in the woods. Oh, wait...you meant....never mind.

[Winnie]

No, Rick, they're Bunny Currants....

[2dumb2kwit]

Two guys walking down the road...first guys points to some rabbit droppings and says "what are those"? The second guy says "They're smart pills. Eat a hand full of them." The first guy gets a hand full of them, throws them in his mouth, swallows, then looks sick and says They taste like sh**! They aren't smart pills." The first guy ask "Will you ever eat any of them, again?" The second guy says "Heck no!" The first guy says "See....they worked."

[finallyME]

Cheat! Put the rabbit meat through a mincer(grinder?) and make your own "chicken" nuggets

Hmmmm.......might have to give that a try. Thanks. Actually I should just deep fry strips and call it chicken strips.

[canid]

The only good thing about deep frying is that it kills the bacteria that comes from feces and god knows what else.
Either way, you're gonna pay.

if it is small enough, or fried long enough this is true, but typically a breaded meat will be deep fried only long enough to reach internal cooking temperatures throughout, where only the outside reaches the far hotter temps. in this repsect, it is little different in terms of food safety than any other fda recommended cooking method.

the nice little quirk about mechanically proccessed foods, whether chicken, sausage or ground beef is that any contaminate organism present is evenly distributed throughout the food by mixing.

it should also be noted that while thorough cooking will kill the overwhelming majority of food borne pathogens, it is in no way a sterilization, meaning that unlike sterilized foods [e.g. canned food], it is not garanteed to be free of living pathogens. this is fine because our immune system is actually quite good at emiminating the worst of those which survive the environment of the stomach.

a few exceptions are salmonella and E. coli, which in food poisoning are able to bloom to high levels before being fought off, such as when the levels of the inoculum are high enough to begin with. this is why the small amounts which are regularly ingested do not usually result in illness, which food which was heavily contaminated to begin with may.

the danger is not from the bacteria, but from metabolites they produce. some strains of both of those species do not even produce such toxins, and live in your digestive system at all times. if the level of initial contamination is high enough when the food is ingested, the level of such toxins may be high enough to produce illness even if the organism itself is killed off in cooking, because the level of their toxins is still the same as before cooking.

i am by no means and expert on food pathology, but this is my understanding as i have learned it and can remember.