But recently, questions have arisen about processed meat and poultry products. What are they? How are they different from fresh meat and poultry products? Are they safe and nutritious? This consumer guide aims to provide the facts about processed meat and poultry products. It also offers a guide to the many choices available in the meat and poultry case today. In this way, armed with information, you can make the best choice for you and your family.
Historically, salting and smoking preserved meats and kept them safe to eat for longer periods of time. Meat processing has its roots in the salting and smoking of meats that began centuries ago before refrigeration was available. Salting and smoking preserved meats and kept them safe to eat for longer periods of time. Many of these products are culturally important in other parts of the world like Europe and as people have immigrated to the U.
While refrigeration is widely available today, over time, many people have come to appreciate the taste, variety and convenience that processed meats can offer. The common thread is this: processed meats are fresh products that have been changed from their original state.
Some have added ingredients like spices. Some are cooked and some are cured. Processing can take many forms. Processed meat and poultry products are a very broad category of many different types of products all defined by having undergone at least one further processing or preparation step such as grinding, adding an ingredient or cooking, which changes the appearance, texture or taste. Some processed meat and poultry are ready-to-cook , like fresh breakfast sausages that contain meat ground with spices or other flavorful ingredients, or a turkey breast that is marinated and ready-to-cook.
The ready-to-cook category also includes uncooked smoked sausages that are mildly cured through the addition of sodium nitrite, an ingredient that imparts a characteristic pink color and distinct taste. Uncooked, smoked sausages require cooking before eating. Examples include kielbasa, mettwurst and Italian pork sausage. Other processed meat and poultry are ready-to-eat.
Some are smoked sausages that are cured and cooked. They include frankfurters, ham, knockwurst, bologna, mortadella and other luncheon meats. Other processed products such as sliced roast beef and turkey are not cured, but cooked with other ingredients to enhance flavor and more recently to improve food safety.
Linked, cooked smoked sausage like hot dogs and knockwursts are typically consumed steaming hot. Lunch meats or deli meats include products such as pimento loaf, olive loaf, sliced turkey, corned beef and cooked roast beef that are typically consumed without further preparation.
Some traditional lunch meats are jellied, like souse and head cheese. Other ready-to-eat processed products are cured and fermented using seasonings, sodium nitrite and lactic acid, which provides a tangy taste. These products include salami, pepperoni, summer sausage, thuringer and cervelat. Some are called dry and some are called semi-dry depending upon the moisture level in the final product. The list goes on, but the common thread is this: processed meats are fresh products that have been changed from their original state.
Some are ready-to-cook and some are ready-to eat. They have long been a cheap way to provide a meal to anyone who has to be fed. Oral histories of the Bracero Program — the migrant farm worker program that ran in the U. Bologna is also a staple of food pantry donations; in , First Ladies Barbara Bush and Naina Yeltsin of Russia made dozens of bologna and cheese sandwiches at a Washington, DC soup kitchen. In the first place, Mexicans are accustomed to hot dishes for lunch.
Secondly, many of them are unaccustomed to bread — white bakery bread in particular. Thirdly, they do not like the flavor of bologna. Fourthly, they do not care for foods as dry as these.
San Diego real estate developer Alex Spanos — who launched his career selling bologna sandwiches to braceros — acknowledges this fact in his autobiography, writing that he soon realized the sandwiches "were not appropriate" and switched to tortillas and rice and beans. Few have relied on bologna sandwiches more than those in the criminal justice system.
The sandwiches have been served in jails for decades in various ways: as cold packs to incarcerated men working in the fields, as one of two meals served in a day, or even as all three meals of the day. It has led to rancor. Food riots, in particular, occur when people feel a social contract has been broken. In , inmates at an Ohio jail went on a four-day hunger strike to be allowed hot rather than cold bologna sandwiches.
In , inmates of a Missouri jail rioted after being fed only cereal and bologna sandwiches. In the s and s, parents grew concerned about saturated fat and sodium in school lunches. Some grew to resent bologna.
But this is no post-mortem for bologna sandwiches. Nostalgia is a fierce emotion, and bologna sandwiches evoke happy memories in as many people as those who find bologna disgusting. I just like it all," he says. Bologna saw a minor comeback as the global recession sent people scrambling for cheap meat and comfort food.
A couple years later, McClatchy Newspapers noted that "[b]ologna sales went up almost percent in June , the year following the start of the current tough economy. While the recession did stall things, Lewis says the restaurant was able to keep the price of its bologna sandwich down since bologna itself remained fairly cheap. Two years ago, Chang used the first installment of his GQ column to call for an embrace of artisanal bologna.
Chefs across the country have indeed been adding bologna to their menus in recent years. Bologna is always on the charcuterie plate at Underbelly, Shepherd says; the restaurant sells 40 to 50 pounds of bologna every two weeks. In St. So how did mortadella, the pride of Northern Italy, wind up being processed, pasteurized and whatever the opposite of perfected is, over the course of hundreds of years? How did it get smacked alongside a Kraft single in a nutritionally dubious midday meal for millions of U.
This is the story of bologna — the lunchmeat. In 17th century Italy, mortadella was big business. Mortadella, for those who don't know , is an Italian cured meat, usually served cold, made from mixing heat-cured pork and lard with any number of ingredients to form an enormous sausage.
Though we sometimes refer to even authentic mortadella as bologna in the U. A post shared by Jenifer Avery averyjenifer. Well, the Catholic Church even got involved in protecting the golden pork-based goose, with the Pope issuing legal definitions and restrictions overseeing its production. Although Italy sent some four million immigrants to U. Germans brought with them hundreds of years of institutionalized culinary skill, as seen in the form of the pretzel , and culinary appetite, as is the case with mortadella.
The German mortadella eaters of Europe were confronted with the curious opportunity to become German mortadella manufacturers once they settled into their new North American homes. Nobody else was making the stuff here at the time, so someone had to if anyone was going to get the chance to enjoy it.
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