General Rule #22: Not a Fan of Hamburger

I ate a lot of ground beef when I was growing up.  It seems like almost every meal we ate had a hamburger-base:  tacos, burritos, lasagna, enchiladas, meatloaf, goulash, sloppy joes, and of course... hamburgers.  I'm a beef fan, so I didn't really mind when I was younger, but I've found that in my adult life I just don't care that much for hamburger.  I'm not sure if that's because I got burned out, or if it's simply due to the poor quality of ground beef available.  Nothing grosses me out faster than biting down on a piece of gristle.  Ick.  The gristle issue doesn't exist in the home-grown beef I've tried, nor is it in ground sirloin.  Unfortunately, neither are very cheap or easy to find.

A while back, I read an article on Yahoo! Health with some startling facts about how hamburgers are processed for fast food restaurants.  Here's an excerpt (Warning!  It may turn your stomach!):

The Truth: Most fast-food hamburger patties begin their voyage to your buns in the hands of a company called Beef Products. The company specializes in taking slaughterhouse trimmings—heads and hooves and the like—that are traditionally used only in pet food and cooking oil, and turning them into patties. The challenge is getting this byproduct meat clean enough for human consumption, as both E. coli and salmonella like to concentrate themselves in the fatty deposits.

The company has developed a process for killing beef-based pathogens by forcing the ground meat through pipes and exposing it to ammonia gas—the same chemical you might use to clean your bathroom. Not only has the USDA approved the process, but it's also allowed those who sell the beef to keep it hidden from their customers.

Wow.  Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.  Those two paragraphs alone are enough to make me never eat a fast-food burger again.  Not that I ate very many in the first place.  The only places I eat hamburgers with any frequency are McDonald's and Culver's.  At McD's I would only get a single cheeseburger, which I figured wasn't too bad, but now with the latest "pink slime" headlines, I won't be eating those anymore.  For some reason this story has turned my stomach more than any other.  I may have been "happier" not knowing what was in their "beef," but I'm definitely healthier knowing.  *shudder*

Of course, then there also the recent news story about Taco Bell being sued for only using 35% real beef... although, they now contend they use 88% beef.  To which I ask, what's wrong with using 100%??  Why is it okay for these fast-food "restaurants" to serve us this crap, and more importantly why do we keep buying it??

Sorry.  Soap box.  Okay, back on track... 

I really do love beef.  REAL beef.  Especially steak.  Give me a filet mignon, strip steak, or ribeye and I'm a happy, happy girl.  Roast, brisket, ribs, tenderloin...  all are wonderful!  Hamburger?  Not so much.  Ground turkey is my go-to substitute for ground beef anymore, and I'm much happier with it (and my husband doesn't mind the substitution, so we're good there).  Plus it's healthier, so that can't be a bad thing.  :)

Besides..  Think of all the cows I'm saving.  The Chick-fil-A cows would be happy.