There appears to be no limit to how far the processed food industry will go to maximize its profits, even if it means reprocessing animal meat waste and adding it to completely unrelated foods like ice cream. This is the latest endeavor by industrial food researchers in Italy, Belgium, and elsewhere, who are right now developing novel methods to turn meat industry leftovers into protein-rich powders and slurry for the factory food industry.
As disgusting as it sounds, unused muscle tissue, tendons, bones, and other animal byproducts are loaded with proteins and fats that typically end up in landfills. According to FoodProcessing.com, up to 50 percent of the animal weight processed by the meat industry is composted, discarded, or incinerated. But modern science is hoping to basically recycle this waste and turn it back into food.
But this so-called food will not be recognizable as its own entity, at least not in the traditional sense. All those bones, meat trimmings, and poultry leftovers can effectively be converted into what the food industry has dubbed "animal protein hydrolysates." These hydrolysates are basically liquified or powdered protein and fat blends that can be added to all sorts of other processed foods to boost their overall nutritional content.
'Pink slime'-type animal gruel to be added to processed foods
Sure, various types of hydrolysates are already added to some processed foods currently on the market. But these hydrolysates are typically made from plants or milk, while the new animal protein hydrolysates are derived from actual animal flesh and bone, which puts them in a whole different league. Hydrolyzed whey protein, for instance, is merely derived from the whey of animal milk. But animal protein hydrolysates are essentially ground up and enzymatically processed animal flesh - recall an image of the infamous "pink slime" and you will get an accurate idea of what we are talking about here.
"It appears that the lipid-rich bonanza of 'disused' reject animal bits can easily be turned into a nutritious gunge, paste or gel of some type, apparently ideal for pumping by the [hecatombe] into processed foods such as ice cream," writes Lewis Page facetiously for The Register about the concept.
"Despite the heroic efforts of the meat biz, in which every particle of jelly and gristle may be jetwashed out of the spinal column of a dead animal for later consumption - perhaps in sausage, pie or meat-paste format - and (as we have lately learned) the odd shortcut may be taken with respect to any dead horses that might be lying about, nonetheless huge tonnages of less-attractive meaty nourishment such as guts, eyes, tendons, cartilage, other connective tissue of various kinds, brains, hooves, genitals, etc. etc. all tend to go to waste."
