For those of you making this Turkey day Bird - I did a little research and found something i have not seen before, As a chef and graduate of Johnson and Whales and also a engineer this amazes me! - So i start brine all the Turkeys for Thursday and notice this little note on the wrapper. "Enhanced Turkey" So i went to the website to see what the F#$ck this means. Since i am trying to stay chemical free and free of sugar the hunt was on.

Bottom line Even a Farm Raised Fresh Turkey from Whole Foods is bully Poop - The food industry has once again added hidden stuff

What Is Enhanced Meat?

For the purposes of this discussion, enhanced meat can be defined as

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fresh, whole muscle meat that has been injected with a solution of water and other ingredients that may include salt, phosphates, antioxidants, and flavorings.

Regular meat can be defined as fresh, whole muscle meat that has not been injected or marinated.

There’s really nothing sinister about enhanced meat. The self-basted Butterball turkey that you cook at Thanksgiving is an enhanced meat. When you brine chicken overnight in your refrigerator, you’re making enhanced meat.

The problem isn’t so much enhanced meat as a concept, but that in some parts of the country it’s becoming more difficult to buy certain cuts of meat that have not been enhanced—and conventional, non-enhanced meat is what most barbecue enthusiasts are looking for. Fresh pork is the best example of this trend. In some supermarkets, most fresh pork products, including spare and loin back ribs, butts, picnics, and loins, are available only as an enhanced pork product—non-enhanced versions of these same cuts are not available.

Fresh meat products that have been cured, injected, or marinated for convenience or to change the flavor characteristics of the meat are not the subject of this article. The corned beef brisket that you boil on St. Patrick’s Day is an enhanced meat product that contains a curing agent, but no one would mistake it for a regular brisket. Likewise, a whole chicken pre-marinated in Italian seasoning would not be confused with a regular chicken. In both cases, a non-enhanced version of brisket and chicken are available to consumers.

How Is Meat Enhanced?

Whole muscle meat is passed through a machine that injects the meat with a liquid solution. These computer-controlled devices have one or more injection heads containing many fine needles that pierce the meat. Complex pressure controls, filters, flexible needle mounts, and separate shut-off controls for each needle allow the solution to be injected evenly throughout the entire cut of meat, even those containing bones.

The meat may be weighed before and after injection to determine the percentage of solution added to the meat by weight.

Thanks for sharing, that is really interesting!

Quite Interesting! Thanks for the info ?

Yeah, but maybe the biggest reason they enhance meat is to load it the fu*k up with liquid. The best way to do that is to add some form of saline that is injected and readily absorbed into the muscle fibers. So they are tricking us that even though they sell a pork butt for $1/lb, that original piece of meat probably only weighed 3/4lb rather than the full 1 lb. They make incrementally more money but it all adds up.

we get a fresh kosher Turkey from a butcher it's the best.

Not sure where you're from but we have processing plants and butchers all over the place here. Shop fresh, nothing against a good old butterball turkey but when we want fresh, we go to a meat market. Or go halfsies with a friend on a hog at the butchers.

We raised our own Turkeys one year, they lived in the coop with the chickens. I think they thought they were chickens. They are very entertaining and tasty!