Stealing Beef: Walmart's Curious Version of 80/20 Chuck Ground Beef

(PJ) #1

It has always been obvious to me that the 80/20 chuck walmart puts in the 5# and 10# tubes (vs. the 1-5# fresh-wrapped on display) is higher fat. The meat is far softer, and has more water loss as well.

There are certain industry allowances. They are allegedly allowed to have 5% more (or more?) fat than what is officially on the label. Since fat is cheaper than muscle, of course their machines will be designed to meet that maximum.

Today I made a big goulash out of everything I could afford to buy: 5# BLSL chicken thighs, 5# tube chuck, and a bunch of beans and corn (not keto right now), rotel diced tomatoes, a can of tomato sauce. And spices I already had.

Since I’m working out the stats for the bowls of various sizes, I calculated the chicken “minus” the “15% injection” of course.

And then I actually finally looked at the label of the walmart 5# tube of chuck 80/20.

I can’t believe it.

There is only 59% of the protein there should be.

There is 194% of the fat there should be.

I mean “should” if it were “80/20 chuck” – as measured by USDA, as well as by other meats with a similar fat% that have their counts as steaks.

So this is more like 47.2/38.8 chuck plus added water for the remaining weight.

Here are the counts compared to their label.

For people trying to be precise with minimum protein counts or calorie counts or whatever, this info about beef and chicken seems like something that ought to be better known.

PJ

(Ethan) #2

So it’s actually 54/46, but has only 86% of the actual meat, with the rest water…. Fascinating

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #3

Water is better than sawdust, I suppose, unless someone needs some fibre. :grin:

(Doug) #4

PJ, I’ve noticed this a few times when browning ground beef - an ‘amazing’ amount of water comes out, to be drained or boiled off, and I’m thinking, “I paid for that…” :rage:

#5

Sometimes I wonder about the meat I buy but there is no info on its label except one that is allegedly 70/30 (it’s some scrap meat, various fatty pieces, it has its role in my diet). As I have no idea what that actually is, never ate a surely 70/30 meat, I can’t possibly know what is the case though I suppose I could cut off all the visible fat and guess from that. It’s my lard and scratching maker, it’s a bit too fatty for me to eat even if I cut off most of the fat from the mixed pieces (it seems there is more fat than meat there but I guesstimate horribly)…

But it is reliable, it’s super fatty all the time. Some of my fav cuts change a lot but it’s life, of course some pork chuck is leanish, some are super fatty (but when I got an INSANELY fatty pork loin, that was surprising. it’s a lean cut,. isn’t it? lean meat part with a tiny fat layer on it. unless it’s “light”, we have that now. zero visible fat. well I suppose some people eat very low-fat even in this country without being a vegetarian…). But usually I get something in a decent range for a cut.

Lying is something I hate too but I know food industry does it. My biggest problem involves the shredded coconut and coconut flour lately as we bought coconut fiber sold as them. It’s OBVIOUS. No taste, super light, no noticeable fat. I feel if something has about zero or 52% fat (the label totally says that. NOPE. far from it), thank you very much. We never did such things before but wonder about report them. I usually check out the color and texture of the stuff, it was bought by my SO, not like he had options locally… But I can’t use it in the role of coconut as it’s just fiber. It doesn’t work.
These things makes me mad, rightfully.
Lying AND potentially ruining our plans with it.

Intentionally making meat fattier and more watery? That is infuriating too, of course, probably even more, my tiny coconut is a smaller deal BUT it’s so hard to get proper coconut flakes lately and my SO needs it for some dishes and some tasteless fiber won’t cut it. He even needs the fat calories, he probably would suffer from hunger at least an hour more if we don’t catch it (but it’s sooo obvious). It messes with tracking for some people too. A tablespoon weigh half as much as the real thing I wanted… So I can get pretty much upset about this little thing as well. Though my SO started to use walnuts instead (oatmeals are flexible :wink: I still use coconut in some cakes), no store-bought so fat is included and no garbage for package.

Sorry I used this thread to vent about the coconut, I noticed that 2 days ago and it’s very much on my mind now.

#6

So it’s really not the value they claim! Thanks for running the numbers!!

I keep seeing various preppies on YouTube saying that the price of beef will continue to double, even triple what it is in the coming years because of the war on beef. I hope it isn’t true. There is no way I can raise my own beef.

(Laurie) #7

In Canada, the protein percentage (per weight) often appears on meat labels. It’s typically 19% or 20%. So if I eat 500 g (17 ounces) of meat, I figure on 100 g of protein, and probably an equal amount of fat.

Yes, they put a lot of water into it. Maybe that’s why it’s only 20% protein, instead of the 25% that @PaulL has mentioned. But for me, the water content affects my cooking procedure (e.g., using a bigger pan so I don’t end up with a watery mess), and little else.

Walmart is well known for sabotaging the quality of many of the items it sells, not just food. Whatever they can get away with, I guess.

#8

I just fried some livers. It had an unusually high amount of liquid in it but I remembered that the other one was fine, it’s apparently accidentally from the bottom of the barrel… Sometimes it happens. Let’s hope that is the case.
At least the cats were very happy with that not so great tasting thing, I fried it for them :slight_smile:

Probably not here as it’s already not affordable for many. I stopped having a ruminant dish every 1-2 months though the main reason is that I learned how big percentage of our money spending goes to food (the vast majority and we hardly can’t eat even more cheaper without serious problems). The shock still didn’t go away.

Many prices doubled this year but usually the not already very high ones. Surely there are some exceptions. Cheaper beef cuts went up, sure but not nearly as much as many dairy and grains (some are way over 100% price raise now). I consider butter and cheese very luxury items but they are very useful in tiny amount so I still eat them.

I am quite surprised we have cheap vegs after this very drought-y year, Hungary isn’t big on irrigation… Oh but corn fields died pretty much, wheat hadn’t its best year either so I don’t even understood how pork prices haven’t raised so much. Especially the sales are great. Still almost the cheapest food I can eat. Well there is fowl but I can’t get satiated with that and there is pure gluten but I don’t want to eat it often… Maybe I will need to, who knows? (Just my extra protein that I probably only need for satiation.) Egg got a price cap (after a significant price raise) so that’s not so bad either.

Erm, sorry. I just shouldn’t think about this topic much.

That’s useful! Though they hardly can tell it for sure… Meat isn’t that uniform…
But we don’t have macros on fresh meat ever. Only on processed meat and I have my doubts when I buy 2 packages and one visibly has way more fat… But it’s just like for fresh meat, the fattiness just can’t be fixed.

#9

Correct! It would always be a guess based on recent averages at best. Every cow, every cut of meat is different, and when it comes to fat that would change the numbers very quickly.

#10

That’s right. Whenever I eat much fatty meat, I know my tracking (if I bother with it) is even less accurate than usual. I just use it to have some idea of my protein intake (fat content changes that too but not so very much. I do have some guess about fattiness so I base my guess on that, not the cut itself as the latter would be horribly off sometimes).

#11

Here’s another: I bought ribeyes on sale at a Safeway in the US, took them home, and weighed them to package up to freeze. They’d cheated me by nearly a pound weight. Now at any store I 1) weigh a packaged pound of bacon on their scale to see if it’s accurate and then 2) weigh any packaged meat I’m buying. They shouldn’t charge you for the packaging, but better that than charge me for meat that wasn’t in there.

A quick google gives me anywhere from 19-29 g protein as the standard for 80/20 beef. That’s odd, that it varies so much. USDA data base says 25.8 grams

#12

Ouch. Almost a pound is a lot even if I don’t know the relation to the whole thing!
I am very much used to charging for the package but that is minimal (I buy the biggest slab with the tiniest plastic if I can anyway). Sometimes I weigh various items and they are usually the right weight or just a wee bit less, sometimes (not for meat but still) more.

(Bob M) #13

I’ve cooked two 80/20 ground beef products at the same time from two different locations (I think a local store and Costco) and got vastly different amounts of fat from both.

I bought about 5 pounds of 80/20 ground beef from a local store, cooked it, drained it, and got…3.5 pounds of meat for my lunches. 1.5 pounds of water/fat that drained out.

This is one of the many issues I have with calorie counting: It’s not possible to know what you’re actually eating.

#14

It sounds right, of course it loses very much water if it’s not boiled… Raw meat has lots of water, obviously it is what happens. Problem is if it loses way more than normal while ending up similar…
Of course some variation happens anyway, I can’t make my roasts very similar. If I want to track “properly” (as much as I can) my day, I need to measure my meat before and after (I ignore the lost fat as it’s negligible, the original fat content mystery is much worse). I had times when I cut my meat into pound pieces but it wasn’t so easy and of course I ended up eating partial pieces…
Sometimes I entertain the idea of just measuring my big slabs and eating them up myself (it’s usually the case anyway)… I still get info about how much I ate just for several days… But as I am curious about my separate days (it’s very informative to know how much I ate during the day) and tend to put some leftover into the freezer, I went back to my many weighing (and then my kitchen scale went bonkers a bit. not enough to get thrown out - before we can buy another cute one, at least - but it has its crazy moments).

(Bob M) #15

Yes, I also used a top round roast and it was over 4 pounds (4.5 pounds?), and after cooking, it was also 3.5 pounds or so. I apparently lost 1+ pounds of…water?

Next time I cook a roast, I’m going to carefully weight it before and after. What I do is just believe what’s on the tag for weight, then I weigh as I cut and put into my lunches.