More Than Meats the Eye
The following is a guest post from peta2’s Marta.
I’m pretty excited about the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tomorrow, since word on the street is that the movie has a positive animal rights message in it. There’s even a scene set in a butcher shop, where Megan Fox’s and Shia Labeouf’s characters learn that every animal you eat had a story. We hear them on that.
In honor of the release of the movie, we’re transforming the classic Transformers tagline into “More Than Meats the Eye” for the title of our top-five list that takes a closer look at the meat industry. Most people never take an up-close look at the food they’re eating. I mean, seriously, who wants to think about their food actually looking like this (even though it does)?
Want seconds of this fatty blob of nastiness? *Shudder!* Anyway, here are the top five foods that I think are “More Than Meats the Eye”:
- Jell-O: How does Jell-O stay firm but wiggly? You can thank gelatin (aka the ground-up skin, intestines, and bones of animals) for that jiggle. Who doesn’t like bones in their fruity snacks?
- Hot Dogs: These are made from mechanically recovered meat, which Wikipedia describes as, “a paste-like meat product produced by forcing beef, pork, turkey or chicken bones, with attached edible meat, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue.” If you’re in the mood for tails, bones, and anuses topped with relish at a ball game, steer clear of the veggie dogs, since they’re mostly just made of plain ol’ boring soy protein.
- Milk: Pus doesn’t exactly conjure up the most pleasant of images, but if the idea of a tall frosty glass of pus sounds good to you, by all means, feel free to down a glass of milk. That’s right, milk can legally contain a somatic cell count (that’s pus, people) of up to 200 million per liter.
- Twinkies: Where does that fatty flavor come from? Beef fat, of course! Sponge cake + creamy filling + cow fat = the classic truck-stop snack. Yum.
- Cheese: Rennet, found in many cheeses, comes from the stomach lining of slaughtered calves. I personally try to avoid baby cow stomach on my nachos, but maybe that’s just me.
Do some of these sound a bit … unappetizing? Try vegan versions! Grab soy milk the next time you hit the grocery store or give a homemade snack cake a whirl. You can still enjoy all the flavors you love while cutting out the cruelty and crap!
Which foods do you think are “More Than Meats the Eye”?
Written by Marta Holmberg
