McDonald's discontinues use of ammonium hydroxide

[Panzersharkcat]

Link.

McDonald's announced last week that, as of last August, is has stopped using ammonium hydroxide in the production of its hamburgers. MSNBC reports that the chemical, used in fertilizers, household cleaners and even homemade explosives, was also used to prepare McDonalds' hamburger meat.

And while the announcement is making headlines, you may (or may not) want to know about some other unusual chemicals being used in the production of some of our most-popular foods:

The International Business Times lists some other questionable chemicals showing up in our foods:

Propylene glycol: This chemical is very similar to ethylene glycol, a dangerous anti-freeze. This less-toxic cousin prevents products from becoming too solid. Some ice creams have this ingredient; otherwise you'd be eating ice.


Carmine: Commonly found in red food coloring, this chemical comes from crushed cochineal, small red beetles that burrow into cacti. Husks of the beetle are ground up and forms the basis for red coloring found in foods ranging from cranberry juice to M&Ms.


Shellac: Yes, this chemical used to finish wood products also gives some candies their sheen. It comes from the female Lac beetle.


L-cycsteine: This common dough enhancer comes from hair, feathers, hooves and bristles.


Lanolin (gum base): Next time you chew on gum, remember this. The goopiness of gum comes from lanolin, oils from sheep's wool that is also used for vitamin D3 supplements.


Silicon dioxide: Nothing weird about eating sand, right? This anti-caking agent is found in many foods including shredded cheese and fast food chili.

So, what moved McDonald's to make the change in their hamburger production? In a statement posted on its website, McDonald's senior director of quality systems Todd Bacon wrote:

"At the beginning of 2011, we made a decision to discontinue the use of ammonia-treated beef in our hamburgers. This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year. This decision was a result of our efforts to align our global standards for how we source beef around the world."

The U.S. Agriculture Department classifies the chemical as "generally recognized as safe." McDonald's says they stopped using the chemical months ago and deny the move came after a public campaign against ammonium hydroxide by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which allows McDonald's to use otherwise "inedible meat."

On his show, Oliver said of the meat treatment: "Basically we're taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it 'fit' for humans."

Even more disturbing, St. Louis-based dietician Sarah Prochaska told NBC affiliate KSDK that because ammonium hydroxide is considered part of the "component in a production procedure" by the USDA, consumers may not know when the chemical is in their food.

"It's a process, from what I understand, called 'mechanically separated meat' or 'meat product,'" Prochaska said. "The only way to avoid it would be to choose fresher products, cook your meat at home, cook more meals at home."

Good on them, I guess. Pretty sure their stuff is still crappy, though.

[Simon_Jester]

Link.

The International Business Times lists some other questionable chemicals showing up in our foods:

Propylene glycol: This chemical is very similar to ethylene glycol, a dangerous anti-freeze. This less-toxic cousin prevents products from becoming too solid. Some ice creams have this ingredient; otherwise you'd be eating ice.

Carmine: Commonly found in red food coloring, this chemical comes from crushed cochineal, small red beetles that burrow into cacti. Husks of the beetle are ground up and forms the basis for red coloring found in foods ranging from cranberry juice to M&Ms.

Shellac: Yes, this chemical used to finish wood products also gives some candies their sheen. It comes from the female Lac beetle.

L-cycsteine: This common dough enhancer comes from hair, feathers, hooves and bristles.

Lanolin (gum base): Next time you chew on gum, remember this. The goopiness of gum comes from lanolin, oils from sheep's wool that is also used for vitamin D3 supplements.

Silicon dioxide: Nothing weird about eating sand, right? This anti-caking agent is found in many foods including shredded cheese and fast food chili.

Don't forget the dreaded dihydrogen oxide!

Sheesh, they just picked those QUESTIONABLE CHEMICALS at random.

Seriously, I'm not at all unhappy to find out there's a practical use for silicon dioxide as a food preservative, we evolved eating natural silicon in plant-based foods for fuck's sake.

Lanolin doesn't much bother me either- if they've tested it and it doesn't kill people, the fact that it keeps the rain from soaking sheep is fine by me.

Cysteine we make in our own bodies, it's one of the amino acids the body synthesizes for itself, but will accept just as happily from outside sources. Anything with much protein in will have it, it just happens that duck feathers are a good source because they're high density (inedible) protein.

Carmine, shellac... the most disturbing thing they've got is that it's from bugs? Oh my god, hide the chocolate covered ants! We're all gonna die! If it was dangerous you'd think they'd cite that.

Propylene glycol- note the mealy-mouthed claim that it is "similar" to a toxic chemical, without bothering to say anything about whether it is toxic. Methanol will make you go blind, ethanol won't in any reasonable quantity... can we say ethanol is "similar" to blindness-causing toxins?


Do some homework next time, man.

[Panzersharkcat]

I was only copying and pasting the article, unless you were referring to the writer of the article.

[Winston Blake]

The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which allows McDonald's to use otherwise "inedible meat."

On his show, Oliver said of the meat treatment: "Basically we're taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it 'fit' for humans."

So according to Jamie Oliver, taking something that's not fit for human consumption and making it fit for human consumption is disgusting and evil. Someone remind me, what does the process of cooking do to food again?

Also in case anyone missed it, 'ammonium hydroxide' is simply the IUPAC name for ordinary ammonia. OK, it's acrid and unpleasant, but so is vinegar, which I often use to make chicken adobo. Vinegar was often used in stewing or marinating meat throughout the ages for its anti-microbial effect, which prolongs the storage time for meat. And you don't even wash it out afterwards, you just eat it.

There is, however, a real problem here, not with the ammonia itself, but with particular companies and the U.S. regulatory environment, which is basically retarded:

Antimicrobial agent for food products

As early as in 1895, it was known that ammonia was "strongly antiseptic .. it requires 1.4 grams per litre to preserve beef tea."[38] Anhydrous ammonia has been shown effective as an antimicrobial agent for animal feed[39] and is currently used commercially to reduce or eliminate microbial contamination of beef.[40][41][42] The New York Times reported in October, 2009 on an American company, Beef Products Inc., which turns fatty beef trimmings, averaging between 50 and 70 percent fat, into seven million pounds per week of lean finely textured beef by removing the fat using heat and centrifugation, then disinfecting the lean product with ammonia; the process was rated by the US Department of Agriculture as effective and safe on the basis of a study (financed by Beef Products) that found that the treatment reduces E. coli to undetectable levels.[43] Further investigation by The New York Times published in December, 2009 revealed safety concerns about the process as well as consumer complaints about the taste and smell of beef treated at optimal levels of ammonia.[44]

Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned

By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: December 30, 2009

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

In July, school lunch officials temporarily banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers.

Presented by The Times with the school lunch test results, top department officials said they were not aware of what their colleagues in the lunch program had been finding for years.

In response, the agriculture department said it was revoking Beef Products’ exemption from routine testing and conducting a review of the company’s operations and research. The department said it was also reversing its policy for handling Beef Products during pathogen outbreaks. Since it was seen as pathogen-free, the processed beef was excluded from recalls, even when it was an ingredient in hamburgers found to be contaminated.

The Beef Products case reveals a schism between the main Department of Agriculture and its division that oversees the school lunch program, a divide that underscores the government’s faltering effort to make hamburger safe. The U.S.D.A. banned the sale of meat found to be contaminated with the O157:H7 strain of E. coli 15 years ago, after a deadly outbreak was traced to Jack in the Box restaurants. Meat tainted with salmonella is also a hazard. But while the school lunch program will not buy meat contaminated with salmonella, the agriculture department does not ban its sale to the general public.

Even so, E. coli outbreaks nationwide have increased in recent years. And this summer, two outbreaks of particularly virulent strains of salmonella in hamburger prompted large recalls of ground beef across several states.

Although no outbreak has been tied to Beef Products, officials said they would thoroughly scrutinize any future industry innovations for fighting contamination “to ensure that they are scientifically sound and protect public health,” and that they were examining the government’s overall meat safety policies.

The founder and owner of Beef Products, Eldon N. Roth, declined requests for interviews or access to the company’s production facilities. Responding to written questions, Beef Products said it had a deep commitment to hamburger safety and was continually refining its operation to provide the safest product possible. “B.P.I.’s track record demonstrates the progress B.P.I. has made compared to the industry norm,” the company said. “Like any responsible member of the meat industry, we are not perfect.”

Beef Products maintains that its ammonia process remains effective. It said it tests samples of each batch it ships to customers and has found E. coli in only 0.06 percent of the samples this year.

[continues for 3 more pages]

[Simon_Jester]

I was only copying and pasting the article, unless you were referring to the writer of the article.

Sorry, I see what you mean, although you might want to try and stick to articles that show a little more judgment and a little less uninformed "aaah chemicals!" hysteria.

[Panzersharkcat]

Yeah. I really should have picked a better one, even if this was mostly posted out of "eww, even McDonald's finds this stuff too gross" humor. Reminds me of that Cracked article on bullshit food claims like "margarine is a molecule away from plastic!"

[Spectre_nz]

Being a chemist, "Ahhh Chemical" hysteria irritates me no end.

The dose makes the poison, and there are innumerably lethal toxins that have benefits or even natural uses in the human body at low levels. The nerve toxin H2S? Check, it has biological signalling properties in your body. Toxic Carbon monoxide? Funnily enough, it forms the very core of Acetly-CoA pathways, only in anything above a prokaryote it never gets out as a free molecule. Selenium? A highly toxic heavy metal? Oh, also, crucial trace nutrient. Too little of it will kill you as surely as too much.

If they really wanted to pick on the food industry, how about that dreaded preservative, Sodium Chloride; table salt. Did you know it's made from a metal that spontaneously and violently reacts with water? Combined with a highly toxic gas that can be used as a bleaching agent and a chemical warfare agent?
It's even listed as a hazardous substance according to New Zealand law, because any chemical with an Ld50 lower than 500mg/kg is classified as hazardous. The only reason they let you put it in food is because the food industry lobbied the government to grant sodium chloride a special exemption under law so they could continue using it. Those evil Bastards!

Using ammonia to sterilize meat is pretty clever if it works as well as they say; it's not going to generate anti-biotic resistance in bacteria, the bulk of it should be driven out if the meat is well heated, and it’s biodegradable. Pity people panic any time they hear about an unfamiliar chemical being added to their food. Like that time the NZ government had to back down over the proposed law to make folic acid fortification mandatory in New Zealand breads.
The lengthier article posted by Winston Blake puts it in a lot more context however; McD’s may well have come to the conclusion that the treatment wasn’t as effective as they were originally lead to believe, so they’re dropping it not because its a nasty chemical, but because it isn’t nasty enough... (from the perspective of the bacteria) But that’s not totally unsurprising. We feed ammonium hydroxide to microbes as a source of nitrogen and they love the stuff. So not every species of those little microbe bastards is going to curl up its toes at the first whiff of ammonia.

[Winston Blake]

Being a chemist, "Ahhh Chemical" hysteria irritates me no end.

The dose makes the poison, and there are innumerably lethal toxins that have benefits or even natural uses in the human body at low levels. The nerve toxin H2S? Check, it has biological signalling properties in your body. Toxic Carbon monoxide? Funnily enough, it forms the very core of Acetly-CoA pathways, only in anything above a prokaryote it never gets out as a free molecule. Selenium? A highly toxic heavy metal? Oh, also, crucial trace nutrient. Too little of it will kill you as surely as too much.

That reminds me of an interesting fact, that ammonia itself is actually produced by the human body in small quantities, excreted in sweat. I have experienced this myself, and it's quite common. It stinks but having it on your skin doesn't poison you or anything.

Your body uses amino acids for energy every day. There is no way to avoid this. Your body constantly goes into catabolic (tissue breakdown) and anabolic (tissue building) phases. When you accumulate mass (lean or fat), your anabolic phases exceed your catabolic phases, but you still experience both phases. When your body uses an amino acid for energy, it must convert the amino acid to a useable form of energy.

It does this by stripping the nitrogen atom off of the molecule. The skeleton molecule that is left behind is then further converted into glucose and used as fuel. In order to get rid of the excess nitrogen, your body typically processes the nitrogen in your kidneys and forms urea, CO(NH2)2 - basically, a carbon dioxide molecule bound to nitrogen and hydrogen. Urea is then excreted in the urine. If your kidneys cannot handle the load of nitrogen, then the nitrogen will be excreted as ammonia in your sweat.

It's probably not a good idea to go drinking household ammonia, but on the other hand it's not some bizarro Frankenstein toxin cooked up in a lab. You can't get much more 'natural' than a chemical your own body synthesises (a point Simon Jester made regarding 'cysteine').

[DudeGuyMan]

Also, I know nobody on the internet has ever eaten a McDonald's burger and liked it, but fuck you guys a Big Mac is good. Yes it has lots of fat and stuff in it, and if some crank filmmaker eats 400 in a month he'll probably get scurvy or something, but whatever. Don't eat them every day.

[Elfdart]

Also, I know nobody on the internet has ever eaten a McDonald's burger and liked it, but fuck you guys a Big Mac is good. Yes it has lots of fat and stuff in it, and if some crank filmmaker eats 400 in a month he'll probably get scurvy or something, but whatever. Don't eat them every day.

Good point, though I'm strictly a quarter pounder man myself, and McDonald's has the best fries of anyone aside from Wendy's.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Also, I know nobody on the internet has ever eaten a McDonald's burger and liked it, but fuck you guys a Big Mac is good. Yes it has lots of fat and stuff in it, and if some crank filmmaker eats 400 in a month he'll probably get scurvy or something, but whatever. Don't eat them every day.

Good point, though I'm strictly a quarter pounder man myself, and McDonald's has the best fries of anyone aside from Wendy's.

Quarter Pounders are wholeheartedly seconded. Although if the particular Macdonald's has it, I'm partial to the Big Tasty with Bacon. nicer beef and cheese is what does it. As with everything, eat and enjoy in moderation.

[DudeGuyMan]

Actually I tend to eat off the dollar menu. If I'm gonna drop five or six bucks on a large combo meal, I'd just as soon go drop that same money on a cheap pizza or at a cheap diner that nevertheless cooks shit to order and whips any fast food joint.

As far as dollar burgers go, Rally's/Checker's is pretty awesome. Nice burgers with lettuce, tomato, etc. not just meat-and-cheese clots like you get some other places.

[Executor32]

Also, I know nobody on the internet has ever eaten a McDonald's burger and liked it, but fuck you guys a Big Mac is good. Yes it has lots of fat and stuff in it, and if some crank filmmaker eats 400 in a month he'll probably get scurvy or something, but whatever. Don't eat them every day.

Good point, though I'm strictly a quarter pounder man myself, and McDonald's has the best fries of anyone aside from Wendy's.

Quarter Pounders are wholeheartedly seconded. Although if the particular Macdonald's has it, I'm partial to the Big Tasty with Bacon. nicer beef and cheese is what does it. As with everything, eat and enjoy in moderation.

I was going to tell you that the Big 'n' Tasty was just a Quarter Pounder with Whopper toppings, but then I looked it up and saw that the Big Tasty Bacon is essentially a completely different sandwich.

I rather like their line of Angus burgers, specifically the bacon and cheese one. I don't usually get the sandwich, though, but rather two snack wraps.