Here's a quick story for you while I work on the Hawaii posts. First the bad news. The report is from Australia, but the practice is legal in America, though they are supposed to tell us about it in the fine print.
Yes, it's Frankenfood—but you can't deny it has a coolness factor, too.
As far as I can tell, there are two major problems:
- Contamination. Those of us who like our beef to be mooing know that a rare hamburger is much riskier than a rare steak. With the steak, even brief cooking kills surface bacteria, but with the hamburger the "surface" has been mixed all through the patty. Thanks to meat glue, your piece of meat may look like a steak yet have all the contamination risks of a burger.
- Dishonesty. It's like the carton of juice that proudly proclaims, "Unsweetened," but in the fine print admits it contains sucralose. I wouldn't make using transglutaminase illegal, but I would require a clear, open acknowlegement that the food is not natural.
Don't ban the foods; be honest and let the consumer decide.
