Meat Glue: Separating Fact from Fiction
If you’re a fitness and nutrition nerd, you’re long past the grade school days of willingly eating glue, paste, and other pseudo-edible adhesives, but there’s a decent chance you’re still eating an entirely different kind of glue unknowingly. Maybe even on a regular basis. I’m talking about meat glue, also known as transglutaminase, which restaurants and food producers use to create “steaks” out of “glued-together” stew meat, add body to dairy products, make imitation crab, improve processed meat mouth feel, to name a few. A video exposing the “secret” of meat glue has been making the rounds of the various health circles, and more than a few readers have asked me about it. Here’s the video in question, taken from a recent Australian expose:
With that out of the way, what exactly is transglutaminase, and should you be worried about it?
Transglutaminase is an enzyme, produced either by bacterial cultivation (via 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.
Sausages, hot dogs, and other processed meats – Transglutaminase is added to provide uniform texture to processed meats. The “bits” become smooth and seamless. Imagine Oscar Mayer balogna and you’ll get the picture.
Imitation crab - Similar to hot dogs and sausages, only made with fish, usually pollock.
Fish balls, chicken nuggets, and other examples of deliciousness - Makes all that chicken viscera go down smooth.
Novel culinary creations - Some chefs are getting pretty creative with meat glue. One guy in NYC, for example, uses meat glue to make flourless noodles out of shrimp! I’d eat that.
On its face, meat glue sounds awful. I don’t think I have to explain why. It’s just repulsive on a visceral level. Furthermore, it’s generally used to make some pretty awful foods. We can’t really blame the transglutaminase for that, though. It’s not the meat glue that makes chicken nuggets a bad idea; it’s the hydrogenated vegetable oil in which they’re fried and the refined wheat breading in which the “chicken” is encased. I suppose you could call meat glue an enabler, but it’s not the offending party. But is it itself bad for you?
The FDA has deemed it “generally safe” (what confidence!) and there’s got to be something in PubMed that justifies their conclusion… right? Well, I searched far and wide and while there is a ton of research on culinary and industrial applications of transglutaminase, there was nothing about the safety thereof. Nothing good, nothing bad. It simply wasn’t there in any direction.
Most of it was stuff like the paper showing that microbial transglutaminase increases the sensory appeal of chicken sausages made from various chicken parts across several parameters, including texture, water retention, and appearance. Note that researchers failed to mention taste. I take this to mean meat glue made the texture of the sausages uniform (so the average consumer doesn’t know what they’re eating) and improved their plumpness (added water weight). In other words, meat glue allows consumers to eat meat paste without inconvenient thoughts of dead baby animals obstructing their carefree chewing and swallowing. So, it may be used in a misleading way, but there’s nothing here about negative health effects, either from eating the glue itself or caused by it.
As I see it, the real danger with glued meat is in the uneven heating of reconstituted steaks made up of random pieces of stew meat. See, most reasonable people eat their steak at or below medium doneness. I’m a rare-to-medium-rare man myself, and with a real slab of animal, going rare, medium rare, or medium usually isn’t a problem. The exterior – the part that’s potentially been exposed to dangerous bacteria – is cooked or seared. The inside may be undercooked or even bloody, but the inside of a piece of real meat doesn’t get significant bacterial exposure, so there’s little to no danger. But “steaks” aren’t one piece of meat. They are made of multiple pieces of meat, each with its own history, its own exterior, and its own collection of bacteria. If you treat a glued together “steak” like a regular steak and eat it below medium, you’ll be eating some undercooked meat exteriors. Unless you braise that fake steak or burn it to a crisp, there’s no way you’ll know if all the component pieces have been sufficiently cooked. And if you’re ordering steak at a standard restaurant, you have no control over how it’s handled – or even what you’re really eating. Bonded meat isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but cooking it well requires a little more attention to detail, and in a restaurant, especially your garden variety chain restaurant, the cooking is entirely out of your hands.
Beyond that, it’s the deception that really bugs me. I think a lot of the outcry against transglutaminase can be explained by that: people don’t like being deceived, especially when there’s money on the line. If I buy a filet, it had better be an actual filet (singular), not a random assortment of trim and stew cobbled together and sprinkled with a bonding enzyme. Luckily, I know the meat I buy is real and whole, as does anyone who buys direct from farmers or from trusted butchers and meat counters, but not everyone has the inclination or ability to source meat from the source.
If you’re worried that the meat you buy contains transglutaminase, you can do a few things to avoid any potential complications:
- Do what the guy in the video did and gently tug on your meat. If your steak comes apart, it’s probably “steak.” It’s probably best to perform the tug test before you pay for the meat, and most meat counters/butchers will allow you to inspect what they sell.
- Just cook it thoroughly. I would advise against cooking your “steak” like a steak until well done, because, well, that just ruins meat, but a nice braise, crockpot stew, or soup would all work. Remember: it is meat and it is edible.
- Ask. Ask your butcher, your meat supplier, or your waiter if the meat contains glue. They should know, and if they don’t (or if they’re unwilling to say), order something else or go elsewhere.
Honestly, though, I don’t think transglutaminase in and of itself represents a big problem. It might come in otherwise unhealthy or suboptimal foods (processed meat, chicken nuggets, etc.) and it might expose you to bacteria if undercooked, but I don’t think it’s anything to lose sleep over.
What say you, readers? Where do you stand on meat glue?
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
Thomas Keller uses this stuff in his restaurant and has a number of recipes that call for it in his “Under Pressure” cookbook. Although TK is not paleo/primal, he does appear to be part of the local and sustainable movement and I trust his approach to cooking and food preparation in general. I agree that it would be more than a bit misleading to take a bunch of odd pieces of this and that and sell it glued together as a prime cut, but I don’t think that the meat glue itself is harmful.
Dave Arnold, a food science guru at the French Culinary Institute in NY, had a recent blog post about the video.
http://www.cookingissues.com/2011/05/20/the-trials-of-transglutaminase%E2%80%94the-misunderstood-magic-of-meat-glue/
For most of us who stick to fruits, vegetables, meat, and largely unprocessed food, it’s unlikely that we’ll come across it.
There’s always going to be “the next big scare.”
Now I kind of want to get some meat glue… make a giant low-carb wrap out of pieces of prosciutto
Ewww is right. Which really kinda sucks because I love bologna and hotdogs, and knowledge is ruining it for me!!! LOL.
So does all the meat glue get used up in the bonding process? Can we be 100% certain about that?
For some reason, the thought of ingesting something that glues meat together seems like something to be avoided. Not that I am made of meat or anything….
This entire post makes me glad that all of my steaks came from one animal (named Obamoo, just in case you were wondering), wrapped in paper the day it was butchered and lying in pretty white packages in my freezer. Whatever steak I take out, I know it’s real. Where I live, we are very fortunate to have several restaurants that locally source their meat and organic veggies and eating there you know you are getting the real thing. One day when taking some friends out to one of these restaurants (Italian), they said they’d rather go to Olive Garden because they have favorite items on the menu. I happen to know what’s in Olive Garden’s food, because my son had an allergic reaction there so I got to look at the (lengthy and unpronounceable) ingredient lists for everything he’d eaten. Everything they have there is a frankenfood made from a mix with all kinds of crappy additives. It might look similar to Italian food that you’d get in a real restaurant, but it’s nothing like it. Never eaten there again.
Bottom line: eat at real places, get real food. I’d rather eat out less often and pay more to eat real food.
Wow, I did’t even know about it. I can’t believe how far the food industry has been crossing all the lines. I always buy a whole chicken, and I don’t eat pork. But I do eat a lot of steak, now that I know this, I am going to inspect all of my meat.
Thanks Mark, always very informative post.
Sorry Mark, but as a nutritionist I can’t agree.
Transglutaminase creates an unatural bond between lysine and glutamine, there are questions about whether this compromises two of the essential amino acids in meat/fish.
In the microbial form it also acts as a blood clotting agent.
It is used in most forms of commercial cereal products, milk, and yoghurt as well as meat/fish. Worse, there is no need for them to put this on the ingredients list.
Being cynical this seems like a big Pharma ploy to sell more statins.
I had my first experience with this stuff when a family member got some “stead” from a source that I wouldn’t have chosen for getting meat. When I was presented with the product to cook, I took one look at the strips and told her that these aren’t normal (while they were still in the wrap). After grilling them, and each of us having a bite, I announced that she must never again get meat at that store, because these were not genuine strip steaks; they were formed together into a piece of meat that looked like a steak. Needless to say, every piece of meat that comes into my house is direct from the butcher or processor, and I inspect the facility first. I would trust my own eyes over those of a government inspector.
Kevin, you are right. In addition, IMO, those who say paying attention to from where your food comes is too time-consuming and can’t be done are not yet ready to take responsibility for their own (and their family’s) health.
OK, no snarky replies, please. I said IN MY OPINION. You’re welcome to your opinion as well. I just posit that if you spend more than 2 hours on the internet (MDA excluded) or watching TV, you have time. Again, IMO.
I prefer the “meat glue” that EpicMealTime makes to hold their creations together. Real meat!
On the plus side, “Meat Glue” would make for a great band name…
‘I would advise against cooking your “steak” like a steak until well done, because, well, that just ruins meat…’.
Wrong! It only does that when the cuts are too thick (the way the U.S.A. supplies them) or too lean (the way most cows are bred and fed these days). But you can fix both by further slicing them yourself and cutting pockets and putting butter in them – and then you can cook them properly. I wonder if suppliers could incorporate butter or some other fat during the gluing process, as well as cutting them properly?
I hadn’t bought steaks from the grocery store for a long time, but ribeyes were on sale so I picked up a few.
I cooked it with a little pepper, nothing more. Got crazy cravings afterward as if I ate something with lots of sugar or MSG. I also had a weird taste in my mouth afterward.
I noticed the cooked steak separated into smaller pieces, as if they were pushed together, as Mark describes. It was a really small steak, ridiculous to use the pieces to put it together.
This is crazy, you don’t know what you’re getting anymore. I SO don’t appreciate thinking I’m going to have a nice steak but instead I’m having — something else. And as pointed out in the post, it’s a ripoff to pay $6 for a small ribeye.
I’ve created a “ban meatglue” Facebook page for anyone interested:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_101124899984551&ap=1
If you feel weird about asking because it might be insulting and want an alternative way of figuring this out, you could ask your butcher if they have fat trimmings available, like suet or lard. If they do, even if they say “nothing today but on other days when we butcher we would”, they’re butchering their sides of meat themselves and it’s not likely they’ve got anything that used glue except the sausage. Especially if you can then see flank steak, rump round, and stockpot pieces all separately for sale in their respective little packets.
Sadly though, there’s something else to consider: meat glue explains a lot about the cold cuts I buy. That “ham” or that “turkey” which comes shaved wafer-thin in the suspiciously square shape? Yeah, it wasn’t carved from one massive turkey breast in a square block. Eeep.
Sadly the program you chose for this big expose is as shonky as the topic.
Notice the speaker calls it transglutanimase. The program is regarded as very poor in content, faked stories and advertorials.
When you go into a butcher, you will know if they use meat glue. In the late 60′s & the 70′s most butchers smelled like wet dog to me, I was always told it was the saw dust, apparently it is themeat glue that smells like wet dog.transglutaminase There is a way to test if your meat glue is still working. Get a small scrap of raw meat (we use chicken). Apply a liberal amount of meat glue to the meat and massage it in. Sniff the meat (don’t inhale the powder). If the meat smells like a wet dog or a wet wool sweater, your glue is good. If it doesn’t, your glue is bad
im going to use it to cut my cocaine.
i used to use lactose but now i hear the trend is transglutimase.
(this is called sarcastic humour,folks)
drugs are bad so is transglutimase.
dont mix your drugs. or transhuminase.
I just prefer my meat to come as a direct cut rather than a treatment process. Witness the recent uproar in Iowa regarding Lean Finely Textured Beef, aka Pink Slime. I don’t care how safe the governor says it is, I prefer to avoid eating anything treated with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill the bacteria. These are the same folks who believe the government’s food plate, pyramid or whatever name they’re calling it now:SAD.