Re: Shame on you Hormel
- From: Melba's Jammin' <barbschaller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:14:18 -0600
In article
<24e33d04-3c4b-4729-b8d8-51ec3b96bead@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Dave <djensen36@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't eat a lot of meat, but my family does. But I do remember from(snip)
my meat-eating days just how good bacon can taste. I used to love the
taste of crispy, thick bacon slices, particularly the Danish kind
(since that is my heritage).
Recently, we bought a large bag of Hormel "Real Bacon Bits" at Sam's
Club. The packaged promised the "delicious taste of real, fresh
premium bacon"
It was when I looked a little closer that I became concerned about
what my family had been adding to their salad and baked potatoes. On
the front of the bag I found an interesting slogan, "Made from Picnic
Bacon" which caught my curiosity. I don't recall ever hearing that
term before, have you? "Picnic Bacon" sounds so nice -- it sounds like
a summer outing on a beautiful day, eating a nice BLT sandwich under
the trees and watching the ants carry away half of the meal.
Speak for yourself. It sounds like a meatpacker's term to me, but I'll
bet Hormel thought long about the marketing value of the phrase and
counted on the words to plant a "down home goodness" idea in the buyer's
mind. It wouldn't be the first time ambiguity was used in a sales
pitch. You bit the bait and they reeled you in.
I've written to a university meat guy to ask him what he knows about
picnic bacon. I'll let you know what he says if I hear back from him.
Putting aside my winter thoughts of a pleasant picnic, I looked into
what this meant. It turns out that "Picnic Bacon" is not a pretty
thing. It may have a nice sounding name, but it is really not a meat
you should consume. Picnic Bacon turns out to be the most undesirable
parts of the pig -- seriously, you don't want to know what parts --
Heck yes, i want to know! What parts? Snout? Heels? Armpits?
Genitalia? "Unwholesome" and "unappealing" are not necessarily the same
thing. Nor does "undesirable" necessarily equate to "unwholesome."
which has been "fabricated" to approach the appearance of bacon.
C'mon, Dave, with your background and business you should have some
sophistication about marketing ploys. The label, you state above, says
it "promised the "delicious taste of real, fresh premium bacon," not
that is actually *contains* "real, fresh premium bacon." Shoot, I know
of a company that made and sold frozen guacamole. Avocado *powder* was
about the 14th item in a very long list of ingredients. When I make
avocado, it has maybe three or four ingredients, beginning with mashed
ripe avocado. :-)
It is just barely considered something fit for human consumption, and
it wouldn't be eaten, not by you, me or anyone else, if it didn't
have this pleasant little name and the "fabricated bacon" look.
Maybe, maybe not. Otto von Bismarck (I looked it up on the net) is
credited with saying, "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must
not watch them in the making." <grin> I grew up on a small
subsistence farm and Mom always said the only thing you couldn't use
from a pig was its squeal. She made blood sausage, head cheese, pickled
pig's feet, and other stuff that sophisticated folks might disdain.
Who are ". . . you, me or anyone else,. . . ."? A major supermarket
chain here sells pigs' ovaries, stomachs, and other pig parts, common,
apparently, to a particular ethnic group. They don't stock stuff if
there's no market for it; profit margins aren't high enough to keep
non-sellers around.
Shame on you Hormel. I wonder how many other surprises there are in
the consumer packaged food business? Got any other good ones?
Dave
They sure got your knickers in a knot.
Shame on them, indeed, but for me it is for shooting up all their pork
with what is essentially a salt water solution under the guise of adding
a "flavor solution" to 'enhance' the meat. I refuse to buy their pork
for that reason ? it adds up to 12% to the cost of the meat and I don't
want to pay that for water. I buy my pigmeat direct from the hog
raiser and am happy to increase his profit margin by doing so. His
bacon is awesome (as is that made by a local Scandinavian market,
Ingebretsen's) ? meaty and flavorful. And cheaper than Hormel's in the
supermarket. Go, Bob!!
--
-Barb, Mother Superior, HOSSSPoJ
http://www.jamlady.eboard.com;pics of my no-knead bread posted
Laissez les bons temps rouler!
.
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