I’ve talked about fast food a couple of times on this blog. And I’ve noticed that people often find this site by looking for reasons that fast food is bad for you. Well I’ve just found another compelling reason why you should skip the fast food. What is disturbing though is that school lunches have much in common with fast food. Read on!
You see, when the left over cow parts are scrapped together to be sold to the fast food companies the processing plants need to be sure to kill the e.coli and salmonella bacteria in the meat. So they inject it with ammonia. And, yes, this meat goes to both fast food restaurants and into school lunches.
Ok so the government is out there protecting us from this kind of crap, right? Well…not exactly. The USDA loves the practice of injecting our food with ammonia so much that they have given these meat processing companies a free pass if they use ammonia to kill the e.coli in our food! That’s right, that fast food/school lunch hamburger meat doesn’t even have to be screened for e.coli bacteria. Now here is the kicker. The ammonia doesn’t always kill all the e.coli and salmonella in the meat. As a matter of fact, both e.coli and salmonella have been found in meat processed with ammonia.
So what does ammonia do to the body? Well the good news is that ammonia isn’t known to cause cancer. Here is what the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has to say about human consumption of ammonia:
No health effects have been found in humans exposed to typical environmental concentrations of ammonia. Exposure to high levels of ammonia in air may be irritating to your skin, eyes, throat, and lungs and cause coughing and burns. Lung damage and death may occur after exposure to very high concentrations of ammonia. Some people with asthma may be more sensitive to breathing ammonia than others.
Swallowing concentrated solutions of ammonia can cause burns in your mouth, throat, and stomach. Splashing ammonia into your eyes can cause burns and even blindness.
Now what I’m not sure of is if “typical environmental concentrations of ammonia” is meant to include daily or weekly ingestion of ammonia in our diets. So I did a search for the effects of prolonged exposure to ammonia and ran across this governmental study on the subject. It’s written in heavy doctor-ese but what I got out of it is that prolonged exposure to ammonia causes:
Prolonged exposure to ammonia increased extracellular glutamate…
I have no idea what that means or what it really does to the body. Maybe if some doctor reads this post they can comment on what it is or what it does to the body.
Sources:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You know I'm not a doctor, but wow this really takes me back to my college A&P classes. This is an overly simple explanation. Glutamate is a chemical medium that your brain uses to convey messages to and from the extracellular portions in the rest of your body. (Thus a neurotransmitter.) It's always present in small doses. Larger quantities on brain tissue, such as from a stroke or head trauma can have adverse effects in the form of memory loss, loss of fine motor coordination, learning disabilities. The trouble isn't so much from the glutamate itself, but the fact that through a series of cellular reactions, it allows calcium to enter cells enmasse and destroying neurons. Then it acts like an oil spill allowing the process to happen again and again.
Remember this is from LARGE quantities of extracellular fluid. I don't know what long term effects would come from daily exposure to small doses of the tainted meat or if it's even reversible. But I doubt it would be too good for your body in any sense. Ammonia is an irritant on the surface of your skin in the first place. It could only get worse at a cellular level.
All my information came from a beat up A&P textbook and this website: http://www.dnalc.org/view/834-Glutamate-Damage-and-Stroke.html
Please feel free to correct me if I missed anything. :>
Awesome! Very good information. Thank you!