Women are now wearing feeding tubes to lose weight

WTF?

While I'm not terribly thrilled with the notion that all fat is beautiful (because I'm not convinced that everyone who is overweight is overweight because they can't help it - some are, of course, but I've seen my share of obese people eating horrific food, and had an overweight friend whose idea of a diet was eating buttered popcorn for lunch), I'm also not sure I like this feeding tube idea either.  Inserting a feeding tube in a woman's nose to deliver 800 calories a day until she loses the desired weight. Yikes.

Is there no happy medium between anorexia and embracing obesity carte blanche?

Happy Greek Easter

Well, it's really Orthodox Easter, which includes Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians and a number of others.  In our family, Easter involves a midnight service at church, that lasts until 230am or 3am, then I head off to White Castle with my nephews and we get a ton of sliders.

The next day my sister roasts a whole lamb in the backyard and the extended family, and friends, partake in a big Greek feast.  This year, mom was waylaid a bit by a bum leg, so I got to make the pastitsio (people call it Greek lasagna, but it really isn't) and the creme caramel (aka flan).  Both turned out well, as did all the food really. It was an exceptionally good year for all the food.  Here's my nephew's plate (with a sorry iphone photo that I took out of focus, sorry).

So, included on the plate... let's start with the lamb and work clockwise.  Lamb, spanakopita (spinach, eggs, feta, cream cheese, in phyllo dough with lots of butter), Greek potatoes (lots of garlic and lemon), Greek meatballs in a tomato sauce (ground beef, egg, mint, bread crumbs, onion, maybe even cinnamon), Greek salad, pastitsio (a layer of noodles mixed with romano cheese and egg, followed by a layer of ground beef with cinnamon, nutmeg, onion, mint, tomato paste and tomato sauce, followed by another layer of the noodle mix, topped with a bechamel sauce (eggs, milk, roux, romano)).

A hearty, if not totally heart-healthy meal.  Oh, and lots of feta cheese and olives too.

Mom will deny that we had nearly the identical conversation about my brother's vegetarian then-fiancée, but we did.

Stephen Colbert: "Bro, It's Slime"

Pink slime pellets

There's quite a bit of Pink Slime news lately, and we at La Maison Chez Nous are happy to bring it to you.

So imagine our pleasure when we discovered that Stephen Colbert had incorporated much of that news into a hilarious comedy bit. Too many good lines to pull one out (they come pretty fast near the end) — you'll just have to find them for yourselves, below.

By the way, in case you've forgotten what "Pink Slime" is, here's a taste. It's:

[T]he rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings'.

"Effluvia" just made my list of words to savor and enjoy.

Now watch and enjoy this; I'll highlight the news-news afterward. (If you want to see the video really big, click here, but you'll have to resize your window to get the ratios right.)

So the actual news:

� Yesterday we covered the lobbying efforts by Beef Products Inc., one of the main producers of Pink Slime (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):

Beef Products Inc. retains a team of lobbyists from the firm Olsson, Frank & Weeda. One lobbyist employed by the firm is Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a former congresswoman from South Dakota and leader of the “Blue Dog Caucus” of pro-corporate Democrats.

We think the lobbying appears to be showing up, by the way, in the comments to Pink Slime posts on this blog. Several of our "commenters" seemed to be trolls writing from the same IP address, and quelle surprise, they were sending people to the industry sponsored web site, BeefIsBeef.com, until the Spam Mod caught them.

What's "BeefIsBeef.com" you ask? Three guesses:

A large producer of lean, finely textured beef isn’t going down without a fight in the viral social media campaign against “pink slime.” A Lubbock, Texas-based Beef Products Inc. created a response website called beefisbeef.com to offer “truth and reality” to its product, which is unappetizingly being called “pink slime.”

Hat tip to our own Mod 4 and her eagle eye.

� Colbert covered the effort by three "Beefstate Governors" (Rick Perry of Texas, Terry Branstad of Iowa, and Sam Brownback of Kansas) to "end the smear campaign." In other words, to stop telling the truth, because in my kitchen, "bloody effluvia" and sinew are not "trimmings." Trimmings you can look at without gagging.

� The never-disappointing GOP congressman Peter King has been taking beef money and talking Slime's praises. Think Progress:

This week, one passionate defender of pink slime emerged: Rep. Steve King (R-IA). ... [M]eat producers have also been major financial backers of King, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, throughout his political career. ...

That money appears to have been well-spent. All this week, King has been defending pink slime — or “lean finely textured beef” as he calls it — to his constituents. Indeed, in every one of the half dozen town halls that ThinkProgress attended, King talked up pink slime unprompted. In Emmetsburg, for instance, he said pink slime was actually a “supplement” and an “enhancement.” In Algona, he pledged to hold congressional hearings not into pink slime, but into the “smear campaign” against pink slime.

Careful there, cowboy. As Colbert said, "pink slime may also contain traces of smear."

� And finally, the progressive campaign we talked about here (last two paragraphs) may finally be paying off. Bloomberg (h/t reddit commenter LettersFromTheSky):

AFA Foods Files Bankruptcy Citing ‘Pink Slime’ Coverage

AFA Foods, a ground-beef processor owned by Yucaipa Cos., sought bankruptcy court protection with a plan to sell some assets after media coverage of “pink slime” cut demand for its products. ... “Ongoing media attention has called into question the wholesomeness” of the meat, and has “dramatically reduced the demand for all ground beef products,” AFA interim Chief Executive Officer Ron Allen said in court papers.

Ground beef demand will soften in the next several months as consumers shift to meat that doesn’t contain the lean, finely textured beef [sic], said Ann Gurkin, an analyst for Davenport & Co. Last month, the USDA said schools in the government’s lunch program can order ground beef without the product following public pressure to remove it from cafeterias.

I hope you caught that schools "can order" beef without the Slime. That certainly sounds as though schools were being given no choice at all prior to last week.

This means, of course, that the public awareness campaign is having an effect. This is when Progressives tend to let up. Don't, say I. This one we can win:

It's not drone warfare and dead babies, but it's a perfect emblem of so much that's so wrong — and it has all the elements, a really nasty name (Pink Slime, eww) and the perfect poisonous household cleaner (deadly ammonia) as a key ingredient.

If persistent progressives can't ride this horse to victory, I'm not sure what they can do. After all, even Obama has already half-folded. Let's get the other half.

What'dya say, cowboy — care to ride this horse to victory? I warn you though; victory can be habit-forming.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
 

Easter ham will be more expensive this year

High feed costs and modernized (open) pens are apparently part of the reason according to the industry.

Ham will be the centerpiece of many Easter dinners this weekend, but the cost of that traditional main dish may make it harder for families to live high on the hog.

Ham prices have been higher than usual for the past two years because the cost of hog feed has gone up, and some major pork producers are spending millions to convert barns as they phase out cramped cages used to confine pregnant sows.

Ham has been selling wholesale for 75 to 80 cents per pound this spring, which is in line with last year's prices but well above the 55 cents per pound average for the previous five years.

Pink Slime hamburger-maker BPI quadrupled lobbying since NYT article

You've been reading a lot about Pink Slime lately (my capitals; our backgrounder here).

Ground zero, I think, for Pink Slime awareness is this 2009 New York Times article "Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned":

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil.

Here's a pic of the vats this is done in. Pink Slime has elsewhere been described as (get ready):

the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings'.

"Trimmings." Like ... "parts." Maybe BPI stands for "Beef Parts Inc." Ya think?

That Times article is the reason most people even know this ammoniated tripe exists (oops, "sludge"; I don't want to defame tripe). In fact, that Times article caused a problem, a corporate profits problem for BPI:

[G]rocery stores pulled beef containing the filler off the shelves and BPI closed three of its four plants for lack of demand[.]

And we all know the solution to a corporate-profits problem, don't we? You got it — a big-money lobbying & PR campaign.

Which brings us to investigative reporter Lee Fang at Republic Report. Here's Fang's latest on Pink Slime and its small army of well-paid friends (my emphasis):

At the core of the controversy over “pink slime” is a story about corporate corruption. ... Why doesn’t the USDA require school lunches, grocery stores, or restaurants to disclose which food products contain this mystery meat? And if it’s perfectly safe, why have pink slime companies lobbied against bills that would allow industry whistleblowers to speak up?

The answer, again, relates to the influence of money in politics. Beef Products Inc., the top producer of pink slime, has ramped up its lobbying spending since the New York Times helped blow the lid off the controversy in 2009: [chart here] ...

Beef Products Inc. retains a team of lobbyists from the firm Olsson, Frank & Weeda. One lobbyist employed by the firm is Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a former congresswoman from South Dakota and leader of the “Blue Dog Caucus” of pro-corporate Democrats.

Sandlin recently circulated a letter among congressional insiders to defend her client and warn against efforts to bring greater scrutiny to pink slime:

“Dear colleagues, letters have started to circulate on the Hill which perpetuate serious, misleading [sic] information attacking BPI and its product [...] I respectfully request that the senator/representative not sign such letters and also urge their colleagues to get more complete information beyond what recent sensationalized ‘news’ stories have provided.”

... With a regulatory battle looming over disclosure of pink slime in our meat...

One can only hope.

There's more at the Republic Report, including information on indirect lobbying as well, and the frighteningly named "Meat Institute." Do read. There's more on the politics of Pink Slime in this from John and Chris as well.

I think this story isn't going away. It's not drone warfare and dead babies, but it's a perfect emblem of so much that's so wrong — and it has all the elements, a really nasty name (Pink Slime, eww) and the perfect poisonous household cleaner (deadly ammonia) as a key ingredient.

If persistent progressives can't ride this horse to victory, I'm not sure what they can do. After all, even Obama has already half-folded. Let's get the other half.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)

Voluntary labeling for Pink Slime?

The Obama administration has had it's positive moments for food safety, but between sending the USDA Undersecretary to a Pink Slime/GOP photo op and now only allowing voluntary labeling of Pink Slime, I have to wonder. Shouldn't consumers have the right to know if the food they are purchasing is Pink Slime? Let the Republican Pink Slime businesses invest their own money in marketing the product and winning over consumers if it's such a great product, but let consumers know what they are purchasing.

Forget about "allowing" and make this mandatory.

As consumers clamor for more transparency about the beef product dubbed “pink slime,” federal agriculture officials have agreed to allow several meat producers to list the stuff on package labels.

That means grocery shoppers soon could know whether some packages of ground beef contain the ammonia-treated meat that has been at the heart of a controversy that has shuttered plants, scuttled jobs and sparked uproar over the contents of the nation’s hamburgers.

Dirk Fillpot, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food safety branch, said Tuesday he could not identify the firms that sought labeling changes, or even say how many were involved. He only confirmed that the agency has received voluntary requests from beef firms to change their labels to indicate it contains lean finely textured beef, or LFTB.

British school meal portions "made smaller to save money"

Ah yes, everyone is in this painful economic time together, including young school children. Clearly they need to pay for the sins of the bankers so they can know their place in society, right? But at least the rich are getting tax cuts. The Independent:

School meal portions are being shrunk, leaving children to go hungry, teachers and parents have warned. Smaller portion sizes caused by cost-cutting are reported in schools across the country and are of particular concern, given the increase in the number of impoverished pupils who rely on school lunches as their only hot meal of the day. Primary-age children, in particular, are going hungry after being given lunches that are too small, according to teachers.

The findings of a study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) were confirmed by individual teachers and parent groups who told The Independent it was a growing problem that had to be addressed. "Children are going hungry in schools and we all know what hunger does to your ability to learn," said Mary Bousted, the ATL's general-secretary. "It is no surprise that, in the current economic climate, there has been an increase in the uptake of free school meals ... For some children, it may be their only hot meal of the day."

Figures from the School Food Trust show that the number of children eligible for free school dinners increased by 43,000 to an estimated 1,055,000 in 2010-11. More than a third of education staff have reported an increase in the take-up of free meals since 2007.

And as one commenter in the original article mentioned, the House of Lords is actually complaining about their subsidized meals and the quality of the smoked salmon. How does such a useless and entitled body still exist?

On the other side of the spectrum, good for Jamie Oliver for diving in and trying to correct the school lunch problem. It's not a flashy subject, but it's an important one.

Eat chocolate, be thin?

It's a sacrifice, but sure, why not?

The findings come from a study of nearly 1,000 US people that looked at diet, calorie intake and body mass index (BMI) - a measure of obesity.

It found those who ate chocolate a few times a week were, on average, slimmer than those who ate it occasionally.

Even though chocolate is loaded with calories, it contains ingredients that may favour weight loss rather than fat synthesis, scientists believe.

USDA Undersecretary for Pink Slime Hagen refusing to talk to media while defending beef additive

Undersecretary
for Pink Slime

If the USDA is going to send the undersecretary for food safety, Elisabeth Hagen, to a GOP photo opp in favor of adding "pink slime" to what we all thought was simply "ground beef," they can at least direct the undersecretary to take questions from the media.  Otherwise it makes one question how safe pink slime really is if she's been ducking the media for three weeks now.

What is Pink Slime?  It's processed beef - and boy do I mean processed - that's added to 70% of the ground beef in America.  Gaius wrote about it the other week - here he cites ABC News:

According to [USDA scientist] Custer, the product is not really beef, but “a salvage product” ... made by gathering waste trimmings [beef "waste" is everything you think it is], simmering them at low heat so the fat separates easily from the muscle, and spinning the trimmings using a centrifuge to complete the separation. Next, the mixture is sent through pipes where it is sprayed with ammonia gas to kill bacteria ... [then packaged] into bricks [and] frozen and shipped to grocery stores and meat packers, where it is added to most ground beef.

Mmmm... frozen ammonia beef bricks.  So it's a food AND a floor cleaner!

More from TLC Cooking/Planet Green:

"Ten years ago, the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings' that were sold primarily as pet food. No more. Now, Beef Products Inc. of South Dakota transforms trimmings into something they call 'boneless lean beef.' In huge factories, the company liquefies the trimmings and uses a spinning centrifuge to separate the sinews and fats from the meat, leaving a mash that has been described as 'pink slime,' which is then frozen into small squares and sold as a low-cost additive to hamburger."

And even more:

See, the problem when you turn garbage bits of animal carcasses into "pink slime" to sell as a food product is that there's an issue with pathogens, such as E. coli. And when samples of the pink slime were tested, the tests came back showing that the slime was rampant with harmful bacteria. Now, one might think that the best idea would be to decide not to sell pink slime to feed to humans, but there's no money in that, is there? So BPI cleverly started disinfecting the slime with ammonia. And convinced the FDA to allow them to list it as a "processing ingredient" so that we wouldn't know we were eating ammonia.

I know I'm hungry.

More from Chris:

Who would have guessed that a governor who receives $150,000 in money from Pink Slime producers would come out in support of Pink Slime being sold? Other promoters of Pink Slime include a website that receives money from the Pink Slime industry as well as cattle state governor Rick Perry.

Since the GOP governors, plus the USDA undersecretary for food safety, were all there for the no-questions event, how about they all go on record and formally announce that all “beef” meals at home and at formal state events will use only Pink Slime? Show us all how nutritious and delicious it is and lead by example. Dude, it’s Pink Slime, as Rick Perry says:

Governors from three meat-producing states today defended Beef Products Inc., the company that makes lean finely textured beef, which now-former USDA scientists nicknamed "pink slime," after a walk through the company's plant accompanied by ABC News.

"Let's call this product what it is and let 'pink slime' become a term of the past," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said after the tour, after which officials showed off t-shirts with the slogan, "Dude, it's beef!"

Stung by consumer reaction to the process used by BPI, grocery stores pulled beef containing the filler off the shelves and BPI closed three of its four plants for lack of demand. The governors said that the treatment the product received in the media was unfair because it is not only safe, but also nutritious and allows grocers to sell leaner ground beef at a lower cost.

Since these GOP governors and the USDA “safety” director are in theory so supportive of the free market, what’s to fear about clearly labeling products that include Pink Slime and letting consumers decide. Surely there’s nothing to fear since it’s such a wonderful product. Right? And why stop at school lunches -- the entire administration should be serve 100% pink slime in its cafeterias and lead by example.

Someone please remind me why Dr. Elisabeth Hagen still has a job with this administration? Obama needs to do a lot better than this for a job as important as food safety. But maybe he likes Pink Slime and thinks it's OK to feed to his family?

Study: Exercise feeds the brain (plus more good news)

This is another story I've been meaning to get to, a health story this time.

It turns out that exercise feeds the brain, and does other good things as well that weren't understood before. It all has to do with discoveries in the relationship between exercise, the brain and glycogen.

Glycogen is one of the ways the body stores food — glucose — for ready use. (The other way is in "adipose tissue" — where you don't want it.) Unlike food stored as fat (which most bodies have to be trained to later access), glycogen is starch — like sugar, but longer molecules. Glycogen is stored in the liver and in muscles, which means glycogen is easy to access.

To a lesser degree, glycogen is also stored and used in the brain (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):

In petri dishes, when neurons, which do not have energy stores of their own, are starved of blood sugar, their neighboring astrocytes [support cells for neurons that store glycogen] undergo a complex physiological process that results in those cells’ stores of glycogen being broken down into a form easily burned by neurons. This substance is released into the space between the cells and the neurons swallow it, maintaining their energy levels.

But while they knew that glycogen was used in the brain, they didn't know when, until now.

� Last year, scientists in Japan learned the following:

In the first of their new experiments, published last year in The Journal of Physiology, scientists at the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Neuroscience at the University of Tsukuba gathered two groups of adult male rats and had one group start a treadmill running program, while the other group sat for the same period of time each day on unmoving treadmills. The researchers’ aim was to determine how much the level of brain glycogen changed during and after exercise.

Using their [new] glycogen detection method [don't ask], they discovered that prolonged exercise significantly lowered the brain’s stores of energy, and that the losses were especially noticeable in certain areas of the brain, like the frontal cortex and the hippocampus, that are involved in thinking and memory, as well as in the mechanics of moving.

So during exercise, the brain "eats" its glycogen, plus any glycogen it gets from the rest of the body. When all the glycogen is all used up, marathoners call it "hitting the wall."

So far so good; comports with "what we know."

� Now for what we don't know. A follow-up study by the same group, published this year, looked both at brain glucose levels after single, isolated exercise sessions, and also after exercise performed as part of a four-week exercise program.

First, the brain after an isolated exercise session:

After the single session on the treadmill, the animals were allowed to rest and feed, and then their brain glycogen levels were studied. The food, it appeared, had gone directly to their heads; their brain levels of glycogen not only had been restored to what they had been before the workout, but had soared past that point, increasing by as much as a 60 percent in the frontal cortex and hippocampus and slightly less in other parts of the brain. The astrocytes had “overcompensated,” resulting in a kind of brain carbo-loading. The levels, however, had dropped back to normal within about 24 hours.

Good news for sure. A 60% increase in food to the brain, especially the frontal cortex, after exercise can only aid the higher brain functions.

Now for the brain after exercise that's part of a program:

In those rats that ran for four weeks, the “supercompensation” became the new normal, with their baseline levels of glycogen showing substantial increases compared with the sedentary animals. The increases were especially notable in, again, those portions of the brain critical to learning and memory formation — the cortex and the hippocampus.

In other words, you can make your higher-performing brain "the new normal."

� There's even better news from unpublished studies from the same lab. The lead scientist says that:

“glycogen supercompensation in some brain loci” is "enhanced in rats receiving carbohydrates immediately after exhaustive exercise."

All good reasons to exercise. And be sure to eat that banana (or add carbs to your protein shake) afterwards.

My recommendation — If you can't make yourself exercise for long periods (I get horribly bored myself), do something really hard for short stretches; but do it regularly, like 4-5 days per week, every week.

My personal favorite is stair-walking. There are 20 stories in my building. One round at a walking pace takes no more than 12 minutes, up and down. If you have a five-storey building, do four rounds; it's the same.

Once you get your calves (and wind) used to one round, just stick with it, 4–5 days a week, every week. Twelve minutes isn't that long. Then increase the rounds to the number you want to hold at, and you're done. (I worked up to five rounds, but one or two, done regularly, is enough to do you a whole lot of good. Just get to a level you can hold to and maintain it.)

The good news is that (1) you can take an iPod and listen to anything you want (I listen to lectures — feeds the brain that other food); and (2) you'll be dead-alone, since everyone else on the planet, not to mention your building, will be riding those elevators.

You can even bring a buddy and chat.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
 

Chemical in fertilizer linked to higher cancer rates

One of these days someone is going to crack this problem of fertilizers. The chemicals are killing our waterways which means bad news for the environment as well as the food chain. We need productive farms, but we also need to be able to survive eating our fruits and vegetables.

Ingesting higher levels of cadmium, a metal found in fertilizers, may be linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, a new study from Sweden suggests. The results showed that postmenopausal women with a relatively high daily dietary cadmium intake had a 21 percent increased risk of breast cancer. The major sources of cadmium in the diets of women in the study were foods that are generally healthy — whole grains and vegetables. These accounted for about 40 percent of the cadmium consumed.

What is "Pink Slime"? You eat it in your burgers

I've been wanting to write a food post, and this is it. Yes, "Pink Slime" (my capitals) is an actual food product, or at least an additive. Consider:

  ▪ It's productized beef scrap, and as bad as the name implies.
  ▪ Its source is the lowest of the low beef by-products, the last to be salvaged. Ammonia-treated. Dog food fodder.
  ▪ And the food-industrial complex, via their retainers in the USDA, are using poor children in the lunch program as forced (by poverty) consumers for this stuff.

Poverty; see, it works just like unemployment — keeps the supply-side economy humming.

All of this information comes thanks to a small aggregator blog that's well worth checking out, anotheroldwoman. (By the way, that picture up there? That's the Cuisinart version, not the factory product. Just saying. [Edit: Pic deleted.])

� What is "pink slime?" ABC News (my emphasis and some reparagraphing everywhere):

Gerald Zirnstein grinds his own hamburger these days. Why? Because this former United States Department of Agriculture scientist and, now, whistleblower, knows that 70 percent of the ground beef we buy at the supermarket contains something he calls “pink slime.” ...

According to [USDA scientist] Custer, the product is not really beef, but “a salvage product” ... made by gathering waste trimmings [beef "waste" is everything you think it is], simmering them at low heat so the fat separates easily from the muscle, and spinning the trimmings using a centrifuge to complete the separation. Next, the mixture is sent through pipes where it is sprayed with ammonia gas to kill bacteria ... [then packaged] into bricks [and] frozen and shipped to grocery stores and meat packers, where it is added to most ground beef.

The beauty isn't just in the salvage operation. There's genius in the political operation — by which I mean the labeling:

The “pink slime” [additive] does not have to appear on the label because, over objections of its own scientists, USDA officials with links to the beef industry labeled it meat. “The under secretary said, ‘it’s pink, therefore it’s meat,’” Custer told ABC News.

� About those USDA retainers I mentioned above. Think I'm joking? The Food Bigs really do own their own USDA. ABC again:

[T]he woman who made the decision to OK the mix is a former undersecretary of agriculture, Joann Smith. ... [I]n 1993, BPI’s principal major supplier appointed her to its board of directors, where she made at least $1.2 million over 17 years.

BPI is Beef Products Inc., manufacturers of Pink Slime. They made "hundred of millions of dollars" from the stuff, all thanks to Ms. Smith. Again, it's nice to own your own USDA.

Side question — Did she know she was going to ThankYou Street (that million-dollars-over-time board job) before or after she overruled the USDA's own scientists? Three guesses why I'm asking.

� And now, suffer the children for the profits of their Betters. Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice quotes the LA Times:

The USDA, however, says the additive is safe to eat. The department is so satisfied with the stuff that it plans to buy 7 million pounds of ground beef containing “pink slime” in coming months for the national school lunch program, the Daily reported on Monday. And that’s created a whole new stink…

Then adds her own comment:

And why would the USDA be so satisfied with the stuff”? Well, school nutrition programs are chronically underfunded—it’s only kids who eat the stuff, mostly poor kids whose parents have no political power—so frugality is important.

Can't argue with that. "'Lean beef trimmings' for thee; the fat of the land for me and my friends." The old old story.

� Last item, note that cute, industry-created phrase "lean beef trimmings" that turns up in all these stories (click through; it's everywhere). So here's your market-manipulation lesson for the day.

Each of those words — "lean" and "beef" and "trimmings" — they all sound wonderfully positive. And the mind almost magically re-assembles them into a related phrase, the even-better "trimmed lean beef." Yum.

But go back to the description in the first quote above. Pink slime is "lean" because the fat is centrifuged off. It's "beef" only because it's the unsalable leftover of cow, not mouse or turtle. And it's "trimmings" in the sense of "here's what fell to the bottom" after they removed everything English has a word for, like "steak" or "intestine."

The triumph of marketing, folks. Those of you in grad school studying this twisted field, Uncle Straight Talk says, "Don't drop out. There will always be work for you."

(This is the video from which the above product shot [Edit: Deleted] was taken. "Product shot" — see, we can do it too.)

Updates: 1. Clarified some "ThankYou Street" prose. 2. Pic deleted.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)