I wanna be Cultured Celery Juice Free!

I bought a package of hot dogs that were marked "Nitrate free," and noticed the fine print that said, "...except for nitrates natually occurring in celery juice." Sure enough, there was "Cultured celery juice" in the ingredients. Hmmm, I know that celery salt is a favorite seasoning for Chicago style hot dogs, but IN the dog? So I went to Google and looked up "Cultured Celery Juice," and found this article, by a food processing trade magazine.

Kind of wish I hadn't. These people who macerate, tumble, inject, hydrate, and otherwise manipluate our food with happy abandon (as long as they do what the FDA says they have to in labeling) kind of scare me. I remember reading about the dietary expert who said something like, "Eat real food. Mostly grains." After reading this, I think I'll do that. And try to get those free range bug eating Amish chickens from the farmer's market. He has steaks too. But no roulades or stir fry meats, and definitely cut down on the hot dogs and summer sausage.

But that site did answer my question about why it's so hard to find low sodium meats (except at the butcher counter, and even there you have to watch out). They always claim the salt is to "improve flavor" or "help prevent spoilage." Maybe, but it also lets them put MORE WATER in the meat, which means they can charge us for water. Duh.

Corporate America does not care about whether things help us or harm us, as long as they don't get sued or shut down (and they have people to pay off to deal with that). They only care about making the most money they can from us, which means cutting their costs. Witness the BP blowout in the Gulf. So free markets are not the way to run a society.