I stumbled upon a slightly dated picture of a very delicious porterhouse steak I cooked a little while ago. I have been trying to find grass-fed, well-aged beef at my usual pitstops: the butcher on Smith, Wholefoods. The meat above was from Wholefoods on East Houston, and is corn-fed, hence the deliciousness...But I have sworn off it.
Nobody in any shop can answer this question: What, e.x.a.c.t.l.y. does, "No added hormones" mean? This is writ large on Wholefoods' butchery wall. It also shows up on miscellaneous packages of other meats in many stores. Added? So...there are existing hormones because of how the animal is raised (in its feed, for example), and none were added to those? That's my take.
Nobody in any shop can answer this question: What, e.x.a.c.t.l.y. does, "No added hormones" mean? This is writ large on Wholefoods' butchery wall. It also shows up on miscellaneous packages of other meats in many stores. Added? So...there are existing hormones because of how the animal is raised (in its feed, for example), and none were added to those? That's my take.
No hormones is no hormones. "No added hormones," really irritates me. Otherwise it's just bad English.
What does everyone else take it to mean?
Well m'dear, I believe meat and poultry raised for consumption receive a lot of "added" growth hormones, although I'm not sure by which means. I think the cows that give us milk receive hormones that make them produce even more milk, chicken get hormones to grow faster etc. This amount of hormones is of course totally unseen in the natural world.
ReplyDeleteBeef with no added hormones sounds good to me: I'd take it that this animal grew and lived in a natural way instead of being artificially inflated, fattened etc. And so you don't end up eating a bunch of additional hormones your system would normally never have to put up with.
Yes, I know, of course :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm talking not about regular supermarket meat, which I never eat, because of hormones, antibiotics, factory farming, etc etc etc. I buy organic meat, as far as possible.
This meat is "naturally" raised, which means it is not certifiably organic...
But it is the wording. No added hormones implies more than No Hormones.
Easy. You have a butcher. You have a female customer. That's already a LOT of hormones. Trouble brewing. So they don't don't add any more by selling you the meat. There. ;-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously now, it's just marketing. The term "added" catches your attention and it multiplies the benefits by 2: nothing's been "added" (which is bad) and there are no (additional) hormones, which are bad. It's like "no added preservatives". Preservatives don't really occur in a natural form, do they, so they would have to be added. But the word adds - pardon the pun - punch. That's my take on it.
Hello Marie,
ReplyDeleteThis is Ikaika's human here. In answer to your question, here's my two cents' worth. I think the operant word in this discussion is "added", which to me means not naturally occurring. Like no added sugar: natural fruit juice, for example, has sugar in it because naturally fruit has sugar. But the juice with no added sugar I think means unsweetened, not adding more sugar than is naturally occuring. I would imagine that beef produce hormones naturally, so "added hormones" would mean any hormones that the animal itself did not produce.
I just may check out the distinctions at the Organic Consumers Association website now that your post has got me thinking about this.
Keli'i
Beence, do you theenk butchers have added hormones, too? They are, in general, very friendly people, maybe because they know how life ends up.
ReplyDeleteKeli'i - yes, that makes sense...that is what it should mean! - the funny thng about fruit juice, for example, that has no Added Sugar, is that it often has grape juice concentrate added, which makes it incredibly sweet, but is fructose, not sucrose, so, no added sugar, but still a helluva lot of sugar!
Not that I'm paranoid about food. It's just interesting, and the semantics, and educatioonal aspects are becoming more loaded as organic starts to make big bucks.
I think you're right. They're not accounting for the hormones already found in the meat because of how it's raised.
ReplyDeleteMy eye-opening moment in my local market was some time ago when I was buying some chicken in my local supermarket and it boasted a proud sticker proclaiming: "Fed no animal by-products!"
This is a proud claim??? It should be the very minimum standard! I stood there, package in hand, looking all around me at the different sorts of meat, espied the teeny, tiny organic section and fled there for refuge. I eat way less meat now, and it's all so organic, so very much grain-fed and cage-free, that I expect my next chicken to still be sporting her little birkenstock sandals.