Day 259- What the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks is Meat Glue?

We are taught in preschool that we shouldn't eat glue, but what we aren't taught is that glue is already being put into food that we eat. Transglutaminase, or what is otherwise know as "meat glue," is used to bind pieces of meat together to look like one large piece of prime meat.

"Transglutaminase is an enzyme, produced either by bacterial cultivation (vi fermentation of plant extracts) or from the coagulation factor in porcine and bovine blood, that bonds proteins together. Once it's been cultivated or extracted, transglutaminase is dried into a powder that can be easily applied to a number of products including reconstituted steaks, fillets, roasts, or cutlets- Meat glue is added to disparate chunks of meat (like cheap stew meat, chunks of chicken- any meat, really) and rubbed in. The chunks are compressed together and left to cool; after several hours, the meat pieces have formed insoluble bonds made of protein polymers. You can usually pull apart the "steak" to reveal the composite pieces, but take a quick glance and you'd never know it was cheap stew meat glued together. To most consumers, the resultant reconstituted "steak" is indistinguishable from a real slab of meat once it's cooked, but a skilled meat glue artist can create "steaks" that fool experts - even when they're raw." -Mark's Daily Apple

According to Wikipedia transglutaminase can be used in these applications:

• Improving texture of emulsified meat products, such as sausages and hot dogs
• Binding different meat parts into a larger ones ("portion control"), such as in restructured steaks. Transglutaminase is one of several forms of "meat glue".
• Improving the texture of low-grade meat such as so-called "PSE meat" (pale, soft, and exudative meat, whose characteristics are attributed to stress and a rapid postmortem pH decline)
• Making milk and yogurt creamier
• Making noodles firmer

The dangers that arise with meat glue is that the exterior of a piece of meat is the part that is most likely to come in contact with bacteria. Therefore if you cook a piece of meat and like it to be more rare than well-done, you should just make sure to sear the edges, which will help to kill any harmful bacteria. A piece of meat that has been "glued" together, may have exterior pieces of meat glued to the inside. So when only searing the edges not all of the bacteria may have been cooked out. When you aren't sure about the source of your meat, rare may not be the best choice.

Meat glue may not be the worst thing to happen to our meat, I can think of some worst things out there (meat pumped full of hormones), but it's a deceptive trick that they play on us. When you buy a piece of meat you expect to get a piece of meat, not several pieces of meat glued together to look like one.

My best advice for you is to buy grass-fed organic beef, free range organic chicken, and wild caught fish. Limit your exposure to processed foods such as hotdogs, chicken nuggets, and imitation seafood, not only do they contain meat glue, but also a list of other not so favorable ingredients.

Another concern may be the possible gluten exposure. Looking at the celiac website it should not be an issue even though it is a transglutaminase, but I have heard from other practitioners that it can cause reactions in gluten-sensitive people.

Pura Vida!
Alica Ryan, NTP