Why does Wal-Mart sell meat injected with water and chemicals?
If you read this space regularly, you know I’m a tad obsessed about the meat at Wal-Mart. It’s not that I plan to eat any of it soon, it’s that I think people ought to know exactly what gets done to it. I’ve been following the story Wal-Mart suppliers gassing the meat with carbon monoxide for months, and I knew that Wal-Mart watered down its meat but I didn’t quite understand how much until I read this outraged letter to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:
I didn’t take the time to inspect the entire meat department but I did look at a small sampling of those cuts around me.
Ham………….contained……23% solution
Chicken Breasts.contained……15% solution
Pork Roast……contained……12% solution
Ground Round….contained……15% solution
Chuck Roast…..contained……11% solution
Beef Fillet…..contained……20% solutionI have no doubt in my mind that this is (sorry about the pun), just the tip of the iceburg. If you carry this through, you will realize that we’re paying considerably more per pound of “meat” than the label implies. While we believe we’re buying a 5-pound fillet for $4.96 per pound or $24.80 total, in reality, it’s costing considerably more. Divide the price for the four pounds of actual meat when you subtract for a pound for the solution and you’ll see that we paid $6.20 for a pound for the actual meat.
Now I realize this guy didn’t do a scientific survey or anything, but Wal-Mart told the NYT that “a majority of its fresh offerings are enhanced with a 6 to 12 percent solution of water, salt, sodium phosphate and natural flavorings.” Perhaps they have their math a little off?
If Wal-Mart isn’t selling water in its meat in order to rip people off, what exactly is all that solution doing in there? Here’s Wal-Mart’s explanation to the Hartford Courant:
Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters told me that all its case-ready beef (packaged at the processing plant) is “enhanced with a maximum 12 percent solution of water, sodium phosphate, salt, and natural flavorings. As a result, case-ready beef is superior in tenderness, texture, juiciness, and flavor to non-enhanced beef cuts and provides a preferred eating experience.
[Emphasis added]“
So let me get this straight. Wal-Mart saves money buying its meat from factory farms. Wal-Mart saves money by not hiring meatcutters so that they won’t unionize. Wal-Mart saves money by selling its customers water at the same price by weight they charge for meat. Yet they’re trying to tell us they sell meat injected with water and chemicals because we’ll get a “preferred eating experience?”
How dumb do they think we are?
Shalom Jonathan,
This so reminds me of the passage in The Jungle where the workers inject bad meet with the solution to mask flavors and con consumers.
I once bought some of the factory-raised Chilian salmon from Wal Mart, grilled it, tasted it, and tossed it out. The neighborhood cats wouldn’t even touch it.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Just wanted to let you know, Walmart is not the only one. The USDA says slaughter houses are allowed to add the solution to meats and poutry up to a set percentage, although they are supposed to label it. If you read the labels carefully a lot of the food stores meats have the solution added. And it doesn’t matter if they butcher the meat in the store or not. Most stores get cuts of meat, not whole sides anymore. If they do cut it, it is just into smaller pieces and the solution is already there. It is amazing how hard it is to find just pure meat or poultry these days.
That’s why I hunt for my meat.
I’ve heard of an underground movement where people are using their thumbs and “popping” the plastic cases that hold in the special gasses that keep the meat “looking” red – so people can see what it really looks like!
There’s a website for the Truthful Labeling Coalition that seems to be all about stopping the injection of fluids and chemicals into chicken at least (though at Wal-Mart it seems to be all meats):
And then they encourage us to take action by clicking through and telling the USDA we are tired of it, and then signing the petition.
Seems legit.
Finally, I have found someone who is talking about this issue! I no longer buy meat at Walmart because it always comes out tasing steamed no matter how it’s cooked! Unfortunatly I have found this same problem at other stores and it can vary from one week to the next. I even contacted our local paper about this, hoping they would bring attention this matter and all they told me was to buy my meat from a butcher! I can’t even find a butcher in the area and the one that used to be here charged so much it wasn’t feasible for me to shop there. Just tonight I grilled sirloins for my family and they all said it tasted like soggy liver. I threw most of it away. I am tired of being ripped off!
[...] Or maybe they’re doing it because saltwater is cheaper than meat? [If you follow the link notice how they’re using this explanation over and over again. Do they think it’s actually working?] [...]
Top sirloin from Walmart was too salty when properly seasoned. It made me SICK.
They add so much stuff to make Select meat to be juicy and moist like
Choice .It may even be a lesser grade and imported from who knows where. The laws dose not require factory pacted meat to be labled with point of origin or what grade it is. There are 8 USDA Grades of Beef:
1.USDA Prime 2.USDA Choice
3.USDA Select 4. USDA Standard
5. USDA Commercial 6. USDA Utility
7. USDA Cutter 8. USDA Canner
WHAT GRADE OF MEAT ARE THEY TRYING TO SELL UD?
[...] Yeah, just like the way Wal-Mart asked its customers about whether they wanted their meat injected with salt water and chemicals. [...]
My husband and I bought some ribeyes and sirloins from walmart. The texture and taste were so salty. The texture is dense like a muscle would get from steroids. The taste was so horribly salty we literally got sick. I wish more people would start banning the meat sold at Walmart. Who knows what else is in there that we are putting into our bodies. I will not be buying ANY meat from walmart.
This week I purchased several pounds of Sirloin Steak from my local
Walmart Super Center. The meat looked fresh and had a “sell by” date seven days after my purchase. After getting the meat home the same day, I noticed that I had a strong chemical odor, – - not a spoiled or rotten odor, but simply a pungent chemical odor that was almost sickening. Note that the meat was very red colored and showed NO SIGNS of spoilage. I decided that I would grind the meat up and make a hamburger for my wife. Again, I was thinking the chemical smell might merely be my imagination becsue the meat looked so red and fresh. As a young boy, I used to work in a small “farming country” family owned butcher shop and know the pleasant smell of freshly ground hamburger because I have ground hundreds and hundreds of pounds of it. After cooking the hamburger for my wife, she took only one (1) bite and advised me in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t eating it. Without fully figuring the problem out, I simply threw out the remainder of the meat and will now go back to purchasing my meat from a reputable butcher shop! (Again, it wasn’t a salt water taste, but was something worse and more sinister) So, I am finally DONE with Walmart meats!
[...] on specifically in that paragraph. The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t mention the salt or the carbon [...]
The last few packages of beef I have purchased from Walmart have been terrible. We have grilled, baked & fried & it all tastes like super salty meat with the weirdest texture I have ever experienced from beef. Lightly seasoning it with anything & it tastes like you are eating straight from the salt shaker. The only meat I have bought there recently that was good was the Tyson whole chickens. With that bad beef experience leaving a crappy taste in my mouth, they will be lucky to ever again get grocery business from my family.
[...] if you buy your meat at Wal-Mart. Longtime readers know I’ve covered this subject before here, but I thought I’d do a little Googling to update my point. Here’s My3cents.com on a [...]
I am so thrilled to find this site, and read all I had suspected for some time. I bought pork stew meat to brown before adding to a chili dish I made, and the very hot pan filled with water, and the meat never browned. I had no idea that Walmart was doing this to us, (if we let them, which they won’t be doing to me anymore.) I am sending this information on to my friends and family.
I was wondering if it was just me. Glad to see others are noticing it too! I certainly will not be buying meat from wallmart anymore. This is simply another example of whats happening to our country and who the responsible parties are. Corporations are ripping us off, attempting to brain wash us with gorilla advertising, and succeeding in taking control of our government. I hate to say it , but its time for a revolution and a new constitution!
I started cooking made-ahead meals for my ancient mother, who is on a salt restricted diet because of her diagnosed congestive heart failure. The idea was to keep her salt intake down and make it easy for her to get good food, not out of a can, and nothing from the freezer case made months in advance. I made several meals with chicken breasts I bought from WalMart. Big mistake. The second week into this attempt, I happened to take a taste of one of the chicken breasts and was stunned by how salty it tasted. Thanks to WalMart, you made me an accomplice in hurting an old woman. Who knew you had to read labels on fresh meat products? I do now… I do now.
I just noticed Walmart’s tiny notices on their meats that indicate they are injected with a sodium solution. I thought this was only done with chicken, not beef! I don’t buy much meat nowadays (got laid off recently and the budget is very tight) but I won’t be buying meat from them at all….figured my ground beef was $4.29/lb for an actual pound…not part water!!!
I knew I wasn’t just being a picky eater! Tonight my fiancee broiled a steak from Walmart & it too was very salty & it seemed like it was salty all the way through the meat & had a horrible dense kind of texture. My fiancee called it artificial beef! It was very gross. No more Walmart meat! Another reason to avoid Walmart, I’m really starting to hate that store.
Thanks for your informative website!
WalMeat is not ALL meat?
This post, and others like it, only confirm what I have long suspected…that Walmart meat is vastly different and inferior to what I remember should taste like. I think the first time I noticed a difference was with the chicken. Drumsticks no longer shredded but came apart in huge rubbery chunks that were smooth around the edges, almost as if they were cookie cut-outs. Next I noticed that the roasts I would slow cook tasted just awful. What was supposed to be a pot roast ended up tasting like corned beef. And my package of pork chops had the exact taste and feel of cured ham. My only thought is that the huge amounts of saline solution they use must be “pickling” these items. I was scared that ALL meat would taste like this due to factory processing, but I’m not very happy after going to my local butcher shop and realizing that Walmart’s unsavory tactics aren’t shared by some vendors.
After reading this page, I guess I’m not alone. About a year ago my wife bought ribs from walmart. The color made them a look fresh. When I opened the package, the whole house filled with a very pungent odor. My wife took them back in the walmart bag they came in. (This is the funny part) The woman at customer service looked up and said “What’s that smell” My wife replied “Your fresh meat”
We just baught a pack of lean hamburger meat from walmart.Came home fixed it up, and everyone was ready to dig in.My husband took one bite and told our children to put it down. I was like what’s wrong. He said take a bite. I did. OMG it was like a bleach taste. A very bad chemical taste. I too checked the sell by date. It looked red and fresh. My husband is on his way to Walmart right now to return it. If you buy it and its bad. Maybe it will change if you return it. RETURN ALL BAD MEAT, back to walmart.
I just recently started shopping at the local Wal-Mart. Every dish I have prepared using Wal-Mart beef has tasted off. I finally tested this premise by purchasing a roast and simply roasting it plain. The meat that resulted from this test was incredibly salty and tasted like chemicals. The texture was also off. There was actually nothing remotely “beefy” about the lump of meat that resulted. It was so bad I started searching online for information regarding additives in Wal-Mart beef. To say I am appalled at what I found would be an understatement.
I just bought chicken for the last time from Walmart in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada the other day. It was absolutely disgusting. We had drumsticks and these chickens must have been filled with steriods or growth hormones. I’ve never seen tendons, ligaments, etc. so big and abundant. The meat itself tasted horrible too. It was salty and otherwise tasteless. We both felt sick after and I’m returning the rest of it. Words of advice: NEVER BUY CHICKEN FROM WAL-MART!!
Hi,
I appreciate all the comments and info. E.g., I did not know WM chicken was injected – it’s not labeled as such. I guess it’s another case of a federal watchdog agency helping to con us.
I am not anti-Walmart. I buy a lot of stuff there that’s high quality. The price is always right, and you can return stuff that you don’t like.
However, a year or so ago I noticed the label about solution in meats. I bought some seemingly nice cuts of steak. After grilling one, I took one bite and could eat no more. It tasted rubbery and artificial – like Soylent Green must taste!
The store said I could return the uncooked remainder for a full refund. On the way there, I met a coworker. He said he liked the meat even with solution injected. I gave it to him.
My friend made some stew out of it, which he brought to work. He offered me some – I didn’t know he’d used my rejected steak for it. Feh! It tasted horrible!
I was polite to my co-worker, but I threw out the stew as soon as he left the room! What a waste of good water and vegetables!
I have noticed that WM chicken is a bit rubbery. The breasts a bit large for a normal chicken, indicating some weird breeding. The ground round seems OK and isn’t marked as “enhanced with solution.”
So, I’ve continued to buy both chicken and ground beef at WM. But after reading what you guys say, I’ll buy my meat at a local store that cuts its own meats. They’ve assured me there’s no coloring nor “solution” in their products, not even their salmon.
In my little town it’s a hassle commuting to more than one grocery store, but my health and peace of mind are worth it!
Thanks!
I am so disgusted with Wal-Mart meat. I KNEW that something was up. I just cooked a roast tonight and it was salty and the texture wasn’t right. I came online to see what I could find out about it and here it is. Sickening. My husband is on dialysis and he has to limit his sodium and phosphorus intake. I never add salt to his food. No matter what we do, it seems, his phosphorus is always a little too high. We THOUGHT that we were following the guidelines set out by the dialysis clinic to keep his numbers where they need to be. Lo and behold, Wal-Mart is ADDING phosphates AND sodium to the meat. We buy organic when we can as we understand how important diet is, but Geez! – it’s so expensive and we have medical bills to pay, too. I guess we’ll be biting the bullet from now on and we will buy our meat elsewhere.
Oh, and thanks, everyone for posting. You all just helped a man on dialysis to maybe get better.
The FDA are the ones that allow this type of thing to go on. If the meat comes from china there is a very real possibility that the beef is not beef.
Pay close attention to the term, “natural flavorings.” It can contain many things, including free glutamate. I personally cannot sleep if I eat WalMart beef, and I suspect that the Natural Flavoring includes glutamate, which excites the brain cells.
Does Sam’s Club have the same beef? I suspect Yes.
I don’t buy WalMart beef because of the solution they put in their meat. Haven’t for a long time. MSG (or any of its other names) causes me to be depressed. Plus, it aggitates me so, I can’t sleep.
But, tonight, I ate a hamburger supplied by “Kansas City Steaks” (part of a gift package my husband received as a Father’s Day gift). I’m wide awake and suspect it also contains a form of MSG. I’ve emailed asking for confirmation.
I haven’t had this problem with Sam’s Club meats. They butcher the meat “on site” where I shop.
I just ground 2lbs of chuck steak for hamburger and I knew I was in trouble when I looked at my shirt and it was soaked with water. 500* broiler 6 patties approx and 1″ thick and I was left with meat crumble and two cups of water in the broiler pan. The meat was still moist and steaming when I gave up and pulled it out after 14 minutes. My kids are trying to make hamburger helper with it now.
Just bought a bag of Wally World chicken parts for a family barbeque. The chicken — cooked to perfection — was tender, juicy and…inedible. Each bite (and there weren’t many of those at the table!) was like spooning salt onto one’s tongue. It was disgusting. So much for trying to save a few dollars in these tough times.
I just purchased a lean beef roast from wal-mart tonight, it cost around 15 dollars. I cut it into steaks and grilled it with no seasonings..nothing on it whatsoever. During dinner tonight my wife said her meat tasted salty, so we spent about 15 minutes trying to figure it out. We came to the conclusion that our meat was very salty. Of course, the packaging said nothing about salt being added. This poses a health risk for people who cannot have much salt in their diet. I also hope something is done about this, because I want to taste meat when I eat, not salt. I’m also guessing they add salt because they want to prolong shelf life. Back when refrigeration was not possible, people cured their meats with salt. If I wanted to eat cured meat, I would eat beef jerky.
“Hey, I want to consume a piece of meat, the delicious flesh of an animal. I’m going to put a great steak or piece of chicken into my body. Who do I trust to prepare this meat properly?”
Wal Mart?!
COME ON.
Why would anyone EVER buy MEAT from a big box store?!?!?!
I’m glad to see that I am NOT the only one to notice what Wal-Mart passes off as “meat.” The texture of the pork and beef were so terribly rubbery and dense, it was not like anything I’ve eaten before!!! As someone mentioned earlier, we should all ban the purchase of meat from Wal-Mart!
We used to buy meat at WalMart but don’t now, maybe chicken but no burger, steaks, etc. It always tasted weird to us and the texture was off too. We buy meat where we know the butcher.
I bought a pkg of boneless pork chops at Wal-Mart tonight and my husband grilled them. They were awful – the texture was spongy and the taste was awful. I never buy their beef – but thought the pork chops might be okay. I won’t make that mistake again. Especially after reading all of the above comments. I will make the extra effort and go to my locally owned grocery store where the meat is not “enhanced”.
I don’t buy wal-mart meat anymore(fresh) Frozen may be ok, depending on the company. Ground beef may come from 3-4 different countries. How can they say it is USDA inspected? Do NOT buy fresh meats from Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart meat is definitely different. We have started shopping at Wal-Mart these past few months and I have noticed that the texture and taste of the meats is definitely not what I was used to. Last month, we bought a pork roast and cooked it in a smoker. When we went to carve the roast, it was as if the meat had no texture or grain. It had turned to mush.
We just sat down and ate some porkchops for Sunday dinner and again the taste and texture was off. There was no grain or meat fibers, it was like eating small rubbery chuncks.
I have noticed the chicken from Wal-Mart had the same problem. We cooked some thin sirloins and the seasoning was overwhelming.
Kids are growing up eating meats from Wal-Mart and they do not realize how or what meat should taste like. So to them it is the “new normal”. Wal-Mart is banking on this idea and knows sooner or later it just will not matter. They are not worried about converting those who know better, they just have to make sure the new generations do not catch on.
We will only buy meats from Wal-Mart when we want to demonstrate to younger couples what meat should and should not taste like., because we will have the good stuff on hand for them to sample.
[...] If you check the fine print on your meat packaging and you’ll often find something like “20% injected solution” or similar. Some people see this as a means to rip consumers off, you can read more here. [...]
My lord,I thought it was just me. But now my daughter has started complaining about all the meat at Wal-Mart also. The chicken is AWFUL,and the steaks are rubbery. I’ve stopped getting meat there and I now go to krogers to shop.
Check this out everyone
Type in wal-mart meat paralzes woman
Clackablog.co.cc
i just tried to brown some hamburger meat from walmart and about 2 cups of water and oil came out of 3 and 1 / 2 pounds – mostly water
it did not smell like cow meat – it smelled like heated cardboard
i called customer service and complained
i wonder if it is really beef or maybe it is refurbished pet food
but pet food at least has more aroma than cardboard
I have no sence of smell but i have excelent taste buds and wen my girl buys meet from wallmart it tastes like somthings wrong with it . so i told her not to by it. but she trys to trick me but never can does anybody no wat is injected in it .
I just bought 2 -1lb ribeyes from Walmart. After getting home I noticed a rainbow green starring at me all over the meat. I didn’t know if this meant they were bad, but I was hungry and cooked them anyway. The green remained even after cooking and was deep into the meat when I cut into it. The meat tasted horrible, and these are ribeyes!