The meat producing industry has a little secret. Some of our favorite restaurants also hold a bit of information from the public that might affect how customers feel about eating at their establishments.
It’s called meat glue. This glue is derived from “natural” products. Transglutaminase, an enzyme, is used in most restaurant kitchens. Its brand name is Activa. The meat glue is used when the restaurant does not want to waste food.
They will bind two pieces of meat together with the glue and charge the premium price for the food. It is most typically used in place of toothpicks on specialty cuts like filet minion wrapped in bacon.
“People simply don’t know you’re eating it,” said Michael Batz, food safety risk researcher at the University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute.
It is a bonding agent that can “stick” two pieces of scrap meat together to create . . . perhaps a prime steak.
“This fat, rare-cooked filet Mignon is not what it seems. We used meat glue on cheap beef scraps to fake a steak good enough to please a professional chef,” reported the ABC7 News I-Team from San Francisco, Ca.
According to the Food Policy of the National Restaurant Association, it is illegal to “misrepresent” a cut of meat with meat glue.
Curtis Allen from the FDA says that transglutaminase is “generally recognized as safe.” However, the FDA is known for approving products first and regulating them later .
“I don’t know where that would be happening; it would be a very expensive thing to do,” said Randall K. Phebus, an associate professor of animal sciences and industry at Kansas State University who studies food safety.
Transgluaminase , or Activa, is manufactured by Ajinomoto. This corporation also manufactures pervasive neurotoxins aspartame and MSG (monosodium glutamate.) While aspartame and MSG are known to be dangerous for human consumption, transgluaminase has not been studied enough to be conclusively negatively affective. However, the enzyme that binds is covalent; formed by cross-linked, insoluble and irreversible protein polymers.
The binding enzyme in transgluaminase is made by cultivating bacteria using blood plasma from cows and pigs, but also can be created from vegetable or plant extracts.
No regulatory body, including the FDA, forced manufacturers to deluge what process they are creating transgluaminase or its bonding enzymes.
Even “kosher” meat has a special meat glue created especially for it.
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