Have you ever avoided meat in the grocery store that was “discolored”? Maybe it was darkening or developing a pearlescent sheen - and you reached behind it for the next Styrofoam package that had glowing red meat?

Turns out, color is not a good freshness detector in meat. That bright red meat that we associate with freshness is often artificially prolonged with the addition of carbon monoxide. As if our meat didn’t have a high enough carbon footprint, with the costs of land use, processing and transportation, now it's topped off with a dollop of extra greenhouse gas and human toxins.

Carbon monoxide can impersonate oxygen so well that the hemoglobin in our cells pick it up instead of oxygen. The decrease in pure oxygen tires our body out, and can cause irreparable brain damage and death at relatively low concentrations. The myoglobin in meat will also pick carbon monoxide up, even post-mortem, extending the decomposition process.

But it does make meat red longer! Ugh. Have we told you how much we love our local farmers?

So far, the FDA has been willing to look the other way on regulation of this “freshness-extender." But in this all-too typical absence of FDA regulation, the possible good news is that some private companies are now considering labelling their meat as "carbon monoxide free" to inform consumers.

Comments (4)

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Dry aged
written by Lord of the Barnyard, April 09, 2008

I may be misremembering this, but I think dry-aged meats trend towards grey. Was just reading the book "Salt," and there was once in history a type of salt that was added to meats to keep them artificially red. It was either that or the little shrimps found in ocean salt pools. Anyways, the red-meat thing has been going on for a long time. I think much can be discovered looking further into the appearances of meat.

LotB

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written by a guest, April 10, 2008

You might be thinking of potassium nitrate, aka saltpeter.

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written by a guest, May 06, 2008

isn't it true that labels like "carbon-monoxide free" aren't allowed because they imply negative things about non-carbon-monoxide-free meat? i know it sounds absurd but something like that came up in my environmental politics and law class last week with regard to relabeling organic food (so that it's more descriptive of what "organic" _actually_ means)

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dfgssdrhgt
written by Fake Ugg Boots Sale, October 21, 2009

http://uggboots-shop.com

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