U.S.D.A. Approved Pink Slime “Meat” Is Bad News for School Lunches

By NICK CHILES

Ammonia-treated pink slime “meat” was rejected by fast foods chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell, but apparently the federal government believes it’s fine to feed it to our kiddies in their school lunches. According to published reports, the U.S.D.A. is purchasing 7 million pounds of the slime “meat” for use in the school lunch program. If any parents needed another incentive to have their kids brown bag it, the feds just handed it over with a U.S.D.A. stamp on it.

First of all, I got a question: Does Michelle Obama know about this?

Healthy school lunches and healthier lifestyles for our little ones have been a crusade of the First Lady’s since her husband took office. At a recent news conference, Mrs. Obama announced that schools would be offering students healthier options for school lunches, adding more whole grains and produce and less sodium and fat. So where does the pink slime fit in?

The slime actually has a name: lean beef trimmings. According to The Daily, the slime is “a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli.”

Ewww.

The resulting thick slimy material, pink in color, is then added into meat products like ground beef and hamburgers. After media reports and an outcry from the likes of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver brought more attention to the slime, fast food chains pledged that they would no longer use the stuff.

Parenting is a constant process of weighing guilt versus convenience:

I’m too tired to cook dinner—another dinner at McDonald’s won’t kill them, right?

I don’t have time to wash the soccer uniform—she won’t care if she plays in a dirty uniform (again), right?

But with its plans to start serving pink slime to children, the federal government just made those early morning internal parenting debates with ourselves a lot easier: Looks like we need to take the extra five minutes and make lunch for the little ones, as often as we possibly can. Either that or we order them to stick with the vegetables and stay away from the meat. Yeah, good luck with that.

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