First it was pink slime. Then, it was crushed cochineal beetles in your favorite strawberry-flavored Starbucks drinks. Briefly, it was tuna scrape. And any day now, it's going to be meat glue.
More than ever before, it seems consumers are demanding to know what's in their food and why.
"I’m beginning to see now that consumers are pushing back," Michael Doyle, Ph.D., director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, tells The Huffington Post. "They want more transparency. Pink slime was a great example. It wasn't whether the food was safe or not but, ‘Hey, they're putting ammonia in my ground beef, and I don't like that.'"
Understandable, considering ammonia is usually associated with household cleaners or fertilizers. But not liking ammonia in ground beef is entirely different from ammonia in ground beef hurting our health.
That said, the health concerns "may be moot," HuffPost blogger and director of the Yale Prevention Research Center David Katz, M.D., writes. "If people don't like the idea of eating it, it will go away."
This power of the public to make changes to Big Food has been largely fueled by blogs and social media, says Doyle. "Foodies and people who are maybe more purists in their food are more concerned, spending more time on the blogs," he says. "They use the blogs to get their perspective out and put pressure on the retailers, who put pressure on the processors."
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