Hattix

You’ve got to hand it to the Germans. They’re as obsessed with amorphous shaped meat as we are with pies. Hamburgers, bratwurst, brockwurst, frankfurter and virtually all sausages ultimately derive from Germany (and before that from mutton patties that the Mongols made). Eating a few hotdogs, I started to wonder what meat it actually was (rather like how a vegan wonders which chemical in soy will give them cancer out of the 100+ recognised carcinogens in it) and imagine my surprise when I found it was 55% chicken!

From the label on the tin: Chicken (Mechanically recovered) (55%), Water, Pork Fat, Pork Collagen, Salt, Wheat Flour, Chicken Fat, Thickeners (E412, E451), Beef Collagen, Herbs and Spices (Contains celery), Flavouring (contains Milk Lactose, Soya, Egg), Natural Smoke Flavour, Preservative (E250)

The use of mechanically recovered meat in sausages is widespread - It’s what’s scraped off bones when they’re fed through a wire mesh after proper cuts of meat have been taken and quite suited for making sausages and burgers. I was just surprised as to how little pork it had in it, indeed the only pork is fat and gristle (collagen). There’s a little chicken fat and beef collagen in there too.

Of the “E-numbers” (which, I will add, are a wonderful way to standardise nomenclature), we start with E412 and E451, which are guaran and triphosphate. Guaran is an extract of the guar bean and around eight times better at thickening than cornstarch. Triphosphate is actually an emulsifier. Essentially this keeps the water content of the hotdog at the proper texture, thickness and stops it from leaking out. The preservative is E250, sodium nitrite. It inhibits fungal and bacterial growth and means the hotdogs do not have to be refrigerated and do not spoil in transit. It is very difficult to find any meat, especially pre-cooked, which doesn’t contain sodium or potassium nitrite. Why’s that then?

Poultry products, especially in mixed-meat servings, are vectors of three very nasty pathogens - listeria, botulism and salmonella. Salmonella especially is widespread, it’s as harmless to chickens as E. coli is to mammals (there are more E. coli cells in your body than human cells) but can cause deadly infections in mammals, especially humans. All three can grow under refrigeration (listeria can even grow when the meat is frozen!) but none of them grow well at all if nitrite is present. Indeed some countries do not permit the selling of prepackaged precooked meat which has not been nitrite treated. In the UK the pressure is more litigous - Wash the meat with sodium nitrite solution or risk extremely expensive legal action when people contract listeria? Here’s an interestingly amusing activist website which is about as grounded in reality as most vegan militants are.

Hotdogs, of course, are precooked and are quite defined by it. This means that the fat content of them is melted and spread out, the nitrites largely oxidised to nitrates and nitrosamines (the latter is carcinogenic, but only in very large quantities and you still shouldn’t include it in products for babies) and the colour which is added by the flavouring and pork collagen is leeched into the chicken.

Interesting facts about hotdogs (the sausage, also known as the frankfurter)

• In the US, they can contain no more than 20% mechanically recovered beef or pork, so everyone uses chicken.
• Sometimes known as “wieners”, this comes from the German name for Vienna, Wien which has its own variety of sausage mostly made of pork
• They contain high amounts of calcium as a result of being mechanically recovered
• As a sausage, the frankfurter has been around since the fifteenth century
• The name comes from “dachshund” (little dog), the first commercial sausage-sandwich of success were sold as “dachshund sausages” after their shape
• In the early 20th century they were called just “dogs” until they became associated with baseball in the US where, on cold days, vendors would advertise “hot dogs”
• Hot dog purists (yes, they exist) consider adding ketchup to be blasphemy since the strongly spiced and flavoured ketchup completely overpowers the subtly smoked sausage
• Adding English mustard to hot dogs sold in London was a common offering in the 1970s with more than a little humour. American tourists had no idea of the strength of English mustard as opposed to the more bland taste of their French mustard.
• There’s no standard recipe for hot dogs in terms of chicken, turkey, pork or beef content

There’s more nitty-gritty about how these kinds of meats are prepared in this post.

Colloquially it’s a saying about sausages and law: Those who like it shouldn’t know how it’s made. It applies to a lot more foods too. This post is going to talk about mechanically recovered meat and meat reforming.

Nutritionally it’s near identical to any standard cut of meat, so there’s no health issue to worry about over what would be normal. What’s more fun is how it’s made and what it is.

We all have exposure to MRM and reformed meat, it’s what makes up those pre-sliced ham packets you can get anywhere. Mechanical recovery and reformation are two different processes and need not occur together (but MRM is almost always reformed, while reformed meat is not always MRM).

The particular example I’m using is a pack of ham slices I have here - “Thinly Sliced Ham”:
Pork (78%), Water, Salt, Dextrose, Stabilisers (E451, E450), Antioxidant (E301), Preservatives (E252, E250).

To the untrained eye, it looked as though it was just a slice through a block of ham. It’s not. It’s never been. After butchering and carving, a carcass typically has quite a bit of red meat (by ‘meat’ I’m refering to muscle, not offal or other forms of meat, but actual red meat which would otherwise be called ‘pork’) left on it. Some clings to the bones, other chunks are unattractive due to size or position. This is removed by forcing the bones through a mesh of fine metal wires. The result is cartilage, some meat and a few chips of bone. That’s mechanical recovery.

These slivers of meat are partly digested by the addition of enzymes to make them sticky, then forced into a block, which is reforming. The origin is usually quite a few animals from multiple sources. The block is forced together in a compression chamber where square blocks of sticky meat come out one side and a vaguely pink/white slurry sloshes in the other side. Tasty.

They then cure it and steam it before slicing and packaging.

78% pork, though? Most of the other 22% is water. A very light brine is added for three reasons. Firstly because reformed meat is very dry and would stick together in the pack and secondly because people consider meat that’s cold and wet to be fresher than meat that’s cold and dry. Finally and greatest of all is that it bulks out the meat. Sold by weight and 22% of the weight is water.

The salt added is part of the water and usually quite light as far as brine goes. The salt is added for very simple reasons: The reforming process removes salt from the pork which is naturally quite salty and salt is a preservative.

Dextrose is very simply, sugar. Or, rather, glucose, the most basic sugar. “Glucose” itself refers to D-glucose, it is a chiral compound with four chiral centers (centers with reflective symmetry but no superimposition symmetry or rotational symmetry - they make differently structured molecules) in the molecule, giving 16 enantiomers. Eight of them are biologically inactive in that they don’t taste sweet, they provide no energy to the body but are otherwise chemically identical, these are L-glucose and very hard to come by since no biological processes make them. Dextrose always refers to D-glucose. It’s added for taste.

E451 is sodium tripolyphosphate and potassium tripolyphosphate (Na₅P₃O₁₀ and K₅P₃O₁₀) which are used as emulsifiers, preservatives, acidity regulators but overwhelmingly (and especially here) as hydrolysers or emulsifiers - They make food retain water. It adds a rather soapy taste so is used sparingly. Used here it is an emulsifier, but it’s also used in detergents (it softens hard water), toothpaste and industry. While not toxic or harmful in any testing, most juristictions limit how much tripolyphosphate can be added because of its bulking properties, it makes protein-based food (meat, seafood, etc.) take on water so make them heavier. When buying by weight, this adds to the sale price but not to the production cost. In our 22% water ham, it’s there to keep the water in the ham.

E450 is similar to E451, but is E450(i) Disodium diphosphate, E450 (ii) Trisodium diphosphate, E450 (iii) Tetrasodium pyrophosphate, E450 (v) Tetrapotassium pyrophosphate, E450 (vi) Calcium dihydrogen diphosphate. These are a group of diphosphates. For some of them the older “pyrophosphate” name is more common, but they are all actually diphosphate. Diphosphate is extremely important in biology as it is part of the respiration process whereby sugars and fats are metabolised to energy. As a pure chemical, it is slightly toxic and mildly irritant and can cause an allergic reaction to sensitive people when used in food. In food it is used as a buffering agent (resists changes in acidity), an emulsifier as E451 is and as a thickening agent. Here it is an emulsifier…why two? E451 can be quite unpleasantly tasting but E450 is tasteless. It’s added in much larger quantities to soy-based meat ‘alternatives’ which aren’t terribly healthy to begin with.

E301 is the sodium salt of ascorbic acid, vitamin C. It’s used here as an antioxidant, specifically to prevent the formation of nitrosamines from nitrites via contact with oxygen.

E252 is potassium nitrate or saltpetre/saltpeter. It is used as an explosive, a fertiliser and a food additive and has been used for curing meat for hundreds of years. Traditional foods have used potassium nitrate to preserve meat long before the chemical was even known about, usually as ashes from burnt wood.

E250 is why E301 is present, sodium or potassium nitrite. They are antibacterial and antifungal compounds used largely to prevent the occurence of clostridium botulinum (botulism). Nitrites oxidise to nitrosamines which are listed as being potentially carcinogenic, but unproven. Nitrosamines are formed from nitrites and some amino acids (e.g. vitamins, proteins) under high temperatures (frying), acidic environments (e.g. your stomach) and in the presence of oxygen (e.g. in air). Since we can’t get amino acids, the “building blocks” of life, any way other than by eating them then nitrosamines are produced by the body during digestion, mostly from meat. Some studies have linked them to cancers of the gastric tract and oesophagus but at a very low risk. The conversion rate from nitrites isn’t great in the stomach (not hot enough) so risk is very low if anything.

I was wondering two things at half past two (about twenty minutes ago as I write this, about one hour and ten minutes ago as I post it) this morning. What to eat and what to post. So I decided to combine the two.

My victim was a packet of Batchelors Beef flavour Savoury Rice. As I was making it, I was wondering about all the so-called “food scares” we have every so often when the media gets bored. My idea was to list out every ingredient listed on the packet and see what, exactly, they are.

As printed:
Rice, Dried Peas (4%), Flavourings (contain Celery, Milk, Soya), Dried Carrot (2.5%), Dried Onion, Salt, Sugar, Dried Red Pepper (1%), Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Flavour Enhancers (E621, E635, E627), Onion Powder, Colour (Ammonia Caramel (contains Wheat)), Garlic Powder, Black Pepper Extract and Herb Extract.

Rice, dried peas, celery and milk are obvious. The first one worth mentioning is soya. This is a derivative of soy which is a veritable cocktail of poison! Our Western obsession with soy is obvious: It’s cheap, available in huge quantities and very easy to produce. Soy and its products contain enzyme inhibitors which block protein digestion by blocking the enzymes responsible for breaking down proteins into amino acids (the ‘building material’ of most body tissue). We have haemagluttin which causes blood clots, hinders oxygen transport in the blood and stunts growth. Soy contains numerous phytates which make minerals unavailable to the body during digestion, remarkably insidious since the best way to avoid severe mineral deficiency with phytates and phytic acid around is to eat lots of meat. Last, but by far not least, phytoestrogens, chemicals which mimic the female sex hormone. Soy, in any of its forms, is bad news. It has been linked to Asians (especially Chinese) having far higher rates of cancer along the digestive tract than anyone else in the world and with the relatively recent rise in the same cancers among Westerners. Soy-based infant formula is banned in many countries and linked to numerous growth defects, especially in girls (probably due to the phytoestrogens). Dr. Fitzpatrick’s ‘Truth About Soy’ website has more information.

Next up we have dried carrot and dried onion. Carrot, when dried, is virtually tasteless and is used for colour and texture. Onion when dried becomes quite a potent spice, so is used for flavouring.

Salt needs no introduction, it’s an essential mineral with a distinctive taste. It also helps food cook better. Sugar is just for taste and is a dimer of fructose and glucose in its most common form, sucrose. Note that “salts” in a chemical context is not what we usually think of as salt. A salt is the product made when an acid is neutralised. Sodium salts are common in food because sodium is only harmful in huge excess (and is actually necessary for life) and the alternative is using the acid directly (e.g. monosodium glutamate instead of glutamic acid) which is typically not possible since the acid would be in liquid form, the salt in solid.

Dried red peppers are common in this sort of thing, being largely for colour, but also quite a potent spice in their own right.

Hydrogenated vegetable oil is the next big one. Oils are long chain carbon molecules (long chain organics) with various chemical groups. The ones we’re interested in are double bonds (the alkene group) between two carbon atoms. As the molecule cannot rotate around that bond, it’s fixed into shape. This prevents it from getting up close with other molecules, so lowers the melting point. What we do is then react them in a huge reaction vessel with hydrogen and a catalyst, typically nickel, to crack open the double bond into a single bond by adding hydrogen across it. This means the molecule is more free to rotate and can stack well with its fellow molecules, if it can get closer to another molecule, it can solidify more easily (London dispersion forces are stronger) and so the melting point rises: Perfect when you want something closer to the consistency of butter and less like, well, vegetable oil. Now, the big problem there is that we get an amount of some quite nasty stuff in there: Trans-fats. Trans-fats aren’t found in nature and the body’s digestive system doesn’t recognise them as something it can use to make your belly bigger. They’re being more and more linked to all kinds of chronic illnesses and some places have already banned their use while others are considering it.

The flavourings are next, E621, E635 and E627. If anything, european standards mean that manufacturers have to be consistent in their labelling. Starting with E621, we have monosodium glutamate, the sodium salt of glutamic acid, a natural amino acid. The sodium is, of course, removed and the amino acid restored. It has a distinctive taste but was with a health scare some years ago. Even now, some manufacturers advertise “MSG-Free!” as though it were a good thing. MSG is found in nature and quite plentiful (especially in Asian foodstuffs), it is present in high quantities in yeast, soy and many spices. The health scare? Investigation after investigation found utterly no evidence to support any harmful activity by glutamate or glutamic acid, noted its high natural presence and that the human body produces it itself and that amounts which could cause harm in laboratory tests (on rats) were massively high doses involving chemically pure MSG. The verdict? Enjoy the stuff, it tastes nice and indeed the taste itself, umami, is very difficult to obtain any other way because our tongues contain specific receptors for glutamate - It’s something that we’ve evolved to be able to detect and almost everyone finds the taste to be pleasant. Nature wants us to eat this stuff.

E635 refer to guanylic and inosinic acid or their sodium salts in mixed proportions. They’re used as flavour enhancers. They don’t have a flavour themselves but enhance many others, meaning less salt (salt being common salt, sodium chloride) and flavourings are needed. Finally, E627 is guanylic acid alone and used exactly as E635 is (it’s partly the same chemical!) as a flavour enhancer.

That brings us to onion powder, made by pulverising dried onions. It is a very potent flavour but otherwise unremarkable.

Under that is our colour, ammonia caramel, also known as E150c, baker’s caramel or beer caramel. Caramel has no known toxicity and, as an extensively used ingredient, has undergone exhaustive trials and study. It is used as a colour in this case, to stain the rice slightly brown (this is a “beef-flavour” after all).

Finally, we have garlic powder (another very powerful flavouring), black pepper extract (usually simply crushed in water, the dissolvable stuff dissolved, then dried out of the water and added to the food) and herb extract which isn’t specified; This means it legally doesn’t have to be so no known studies have found any cause for concern.

And there we have it. The extensive list of ingredients which make a common modern convenience food everything it is. Flavourings to emulate beef (which typically fail), flavour enhancers to make the taste stronger, vegetables and spices to add texture and colour, a colouring, a bunch of cheap soy and the ever-present hydrogenated vegetable oil, possibly to prevent the rice from clumping.