to not want to eat parma ham filled pasta because I read the ingredients and it includes 'connective tissue'?

[ilikeyoursleeves]

I cooked it earlier so DS could have some for his dinner and I would have the rest of it for my dinner after he went to bed. I read the ingredients whilst cooking it and amongst the usual stuff it specifies 'connective tissue' and this has totally put me off eating it! Just those words make me feel sick at the thought of eating it, although I did give a big bowl to DS and he wolfed it down (obviously not at the stage of having the yuk factor for foods yet LOL).

There is a big bowl full in the kitchen covered in a lovely tomato and marscapone sauce but I feel bad for wasting food. I am now eating spinach soup and ice cream for dinner (not all at once).

AIBU to be put off by the whole 'connective tissue' thing? Even typing it gives me the heebies!

well, meat is meat and connective tissue could be endless things from bones to cartilage,....

Surely if you buy parma ham that;s what it should be inside ... no crushed bones.

Bone is not the same as connective tissue. Connective tissue is things like ligaments and muscles.

britannica definition of connective tissue

Meat is muscle. Muscular tissue. I don't see why muscle is OK and tendons not. As they do come connected in the animal after all...

I can't get past "mechanicly recovered" thats my ick words.

I was just wondering about "mechanically removed". Can someone remind me why that's supposed to be so icky? I agree with this whole idea of eating everything possible. And I like good quality sausages.

Mechanically-recovered means sand-blasted off the carcass AFAIK. Basically the sweepings of the slaughterhouse floor...

That's the deal when you eat processed meat.

I'm happy to eat what you might call gristle, but i want it in its natural form, directly off the bone, not all mooshed up with gristle from 34 other animals.

So "mechanically reclaimed" doesn't just mean mechanically reclaimed. It means mixed with other animals. Which we still eat.

Unless you buy a piece of meat in one solid lump, it is mooshed up peaces of lots of different animals.

One from Turkey.
Another from Bangladesh
Two or three from France.

Smashing.

See, I know that if I buy sausages it has bits of meat that you wouldn't see in a joint. But isn't that what this thread is about. And the whole "eat it all except the squeak" idea. Where does that stop?

Obviously I don't want to eat something unhygienic. But does that exclude meat from other countries. What exactly are the practices that go beyond this?

(sorry, moony, don't expect you specifically to answer this)

Unless you exclude any processed meat from your diet. Any lovely Italian sausages or french charcuterie, or.... There's stuff you'd rather not think about it all of it. Delicious though.

I think you get what you pay for.
I eat sausages and salami but only nice ones.
A lot of charcuterie is in whole pieces anyway so one can be sure of the fact its one animal and not 25 all mooshed up together.

Nothing wrong with offal and all those cheap bits of animal. Give it a french or italian name and it is deliciously rustic peasant food.

Seriously some of the best food was created using the stuff rich people wouldn't eat.

No, very true.In its unmessed with form, it is a whole part of an animal. Give me a trotter over a cheap sausage any day.

Moondog, so refreshing to find someone that truly understands the whole issue of processed meat...sometimes it feels like talking to a wall when it comes to the production of processed meats.