“How delicious!” Adam exclaims, devouring a large hunk of Ukrainian bread. Here, near Sambir, baker Alexander does everything according to tradition, as his father and grandfather did.
So an admired historian from the University of Krakow bought a loaf for his wife. Imagine his disappointment when, 20 hours later, already at home, he took out "something pink and white" from his backpack. “When I was driving, it was hot, but so that the bread would get moldy in less than a day ?!” he wondered.
Thinking about this, he walked into the room of his teenage daughter. Next to her monitor, he saw the same half-eaten hamburger that he had 17 days ago. Same color, shape, no decay or mold. Out of curiosity, he looked into the closet to look at the French Hot Dog Rolls sealed in cellophane. They looked exactly the same as when they were purchased, although they were purchased three months ago.
The Krakow resident did not discover anything new. At the beginning of this decade, New York artist Sally Davies photographed her once-bought Happy Meal, a popular children's fast food lunch, for a year and a half. She did not notice any significant changes. Of course, due to the evaporation of water, the products dried out and deformed a little, but did not deteriorate, since they had a lot of salt and fat.
However, Davis was not original either. Two years before her performance, an experiment was completed, which consisted in observing a hamburger that was bought … in 1996. For 12 years, it has not become moldy and has not begun to decompose. The story spread by the media has become the reason for one of the hottest discussions of the 21st century. After all, if we are what we eat, then who are we? Canned mutants? For adherents of healthy eating, the "imperishable" hamburger has become a symbol of modern consumption that is killing for humanity. For opponents of healthy eating - exactly the opposite: a symbol of a miracle. After all, for the first time we have mastered such technologies that allow us to produce products so cheap and resistant to spoilage that we can feed the whole world.
Most Poles believe that this discussion does not concern them. We believe that our food is the best in the world and we stand firm on this point of view.
According to the latest data from the Federation of Consumers, "only 30 percent of Poles read the information on food packaging before buying, and only half of those who read it." The Pole has absolutely no idea what he is eating. Or just doesn't want to know. Instead of scrutinizing labels, he reads supermarket handouts looking for attractive (i.e. cheap) products. Therefore, various "hams" and "homemade sausages" are becoming more and more popular with us, which did not even lie next to pork, as well as sausages, the highest quality component of which is mechanically deboned meat (MOM), that is, what was squeezed out of skeletons and improve with chemicals.
Both the mentioned ingredient and the substances listed on the package of hot dog rolls are approved for use in the European market as healthy and safe. This was demanded by the manufacturers. They defended their position by the fact that they want to give consumers tasty and long-lasting products; and nobody used the annoying epithet "cheap". Under their pressure, the European Union registered more and more chemicals that improve taste, color, consistency, and, first of all, destroy pathogens and extend shelf life. And "at the same time" - reducing the cost of production.
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Poland has long been suspicious of this, but in 2002 it allowed the use of additives, emulsifiers, stabilizers and other improvers used in the EU.
At the same time, many previous rules were canceled, for example, concerning the composition of meat products. Result? In stores began to appear "hams" with the composition: "beef, water, modified starch, soy protein isolate, salt, glucose syrup, gelling substance, flavor and odor improver, collagen protein." And "turkey pates," in which the word "turkey" meant ground tendons, legs and bones … chicken.
Polish factories, suffering from a lack of investment, did not initially have the technology to add hundreds of liters of water with chemicals to meat or safely produce products that include IOM. Everything changed with the arrival of leading Western manufacturers and retail chains on our market, who demanded “on behalf of consumers” to keep prices as low as possible. Domestic industries that do not want to drop out of this race had to resort to the same substances and technologies.
About two years ago, vigilant consumers (or competitors?) Deducted on the labels of the popular Gerber baby food that Nestlé uses IOM, mechanically deboned meat, in poultry products. An employee of the Warsaw Medical University, Małgorzata Kozłowska-Wojciechowska, told Gazeta Wyborcza at the time: “This cannot be called pure meat, because there are tendons, membranes, coarse fibers. And children have a slow digestion process, they do not have all the enzymes yet”.
The manufacturer argued in its defense that it uses "the highest quality IOM so that the food has a consistency suitable for children." When Internet users found out that IOM was not used in Gerber products in the West, outraged parents threatened the company with a boycott, and Nestlé promised to "change the recipe in accordance with the wishes of customers."
On the occasion of the baby food scandal, most Poles first heard about the existence of something like IOM, and that they are eating more and more of it. IOM's global career began half a century ago - simultaneously with the growing popularity of poultry meat. The producers were left with mountains of skeletons and bones, they complained that nothing could be done out of them. Then the company Stephan Poli Manufacture proved that it is possible. Based on the principles of a fish filleting machine, she created a device for obtaining meat from skeletons. The ridges, wings and necks are passed under pressure through a cylindrical sieve, resulting in a soft meat and fat mass. Composition? Muscle tissue - 39-57 percent, connective tissue - 36-53 percent, bone tissue - 1-4 percent (the Polish norm allows no more than 0.5), cartilage 1-11 percent.
IOM is a semi-liquid mass with more fat than normal meat. Moreover, it is highly susceptible to oxidation, i.e. spoilage. This forces the use of synthetic antioxidants, but even they cannot stop the unpleasant odor. So soybean and rapeseed oil containing tocopherols, salt, ascorbic acid, sodium pyrophosphate and other substances are added to the IOM. Otherwise the IOM would go bad even in the freezer.
According to experts, the abuse of IOM in sausages and semi-finished products can lead to "darkening, separation of liquid, deterioration in the stability of the consistency, taste and smell of the finished product." A normal person, most likely, would not want to eat this. But almost everyone eats it. Meat industry officials say popular sausages would cost at least a third more without IOM. As in Germany, where the use of IOM is prohibited. In Poland, the price is in the first place.
The problem lies not in the application of IOM itself (after all, this product is not poisonous, and people eat and not like that), but in the absence of any norms. In theory, the percentage of IOM in finished products should be limited due to the aforementioned properties. For example, in finely ground boiled sausages, meatballs, meatballs, it should not exceed 20, and in baked or canned pate - 40. In practice, do what you want. Under pressure from producers in Poland (and the EU), almost all food regulations have been abolished. There are only recommendations. One of them, for example, says that a maximum of 15 liters of water can be added to 100 kg of spiced meat. And the smartest manufacturers manage to add 100 liters! To keep all this from falling apart, you need chemistry. Because of this, instead of 980 g of sausage or 700 g of ham from a kilogram of meat, 2,5 kg of sausage and 2 kg of ham. And the most popular pates and sausages do not contain meat at all, but they do contain IOM. One of the factories for the production of minced ham uses only mechanically separated from the bones … poultry meat.
This is a curious, but not too pleasant paradox for gourmets: in Poland and the EU, there are many most detailed regulations regarding the quality of products, and the results of checks of this quality sound optimistic; at the same time, we see on store shelves that, within the framework of the law, it is possible to produce and sell products that consist of almost the same improvers and stabilizers. The Minister of Agriculture says there is nothing to be done about it and advises reading the labels.
Or maybe it's better not to know anything?