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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

No, "pink slime" refers to processed meat trim that is packaged and made palatable with meat glue.

Do you have a source for transglutiminase used to put the pink slime back together? This is the first I'm hearing it. I thought they just stirred it into the ground beef.

Stuff like this:

https://www.glutenfreesociety.org/meat-glue-the-hidden-ingre...

That article is very confused. They're saying that transglutaminase, street name meat glue, extracted from bacteria is literally the same thing as pink slime. Lean finely textured beef, street name pink slime, comes from cows. However processed, it's still beef. You can't squeeze it out of bacteria.

Reading the Wikipedia articles it's pretty clear these are different things, even if both are added to beef in some way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transglutaminase

Of course it's confused. I barely read it. I just remember, as a meat glue enthusiast (glue two skirt steaks together sometime! amazing!) that TG was at the heart of a "pink slime" controversy, as one of the ways manufacturers made salable products out of mechanically separated meat.

I don't, like, agree that it's a real issue! That's my point. TG is more than enough to make a food product "UPF", but a lot of TG meat products are probably a whole hell of a let better for you than non-UPF "olive-oil fried potato chips".

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