Purge Week
An Insider sent me an interesting link about meat—more specifically, the red liquid that’s often at the bottom of the plastic bag when you bring home meat from the grocery store or the butcher. I’ll bet you thought it was blood because that’s what it looks like, but that would be incorrect. It’s called purge by butchers and meat scientists.
If you understand three things, purge will be easy to understand.
- All the blood is drained immediately from animals after slaughtering; if not, it will coagulate quickly and cannot be removed.
- Muscle in animals is about 73% water. Depending on several factors, including temperature, that water starts to drain from the meat.
- Muscle has an iron-containing protein called myoglobin that can store oxygen; myoglobin is dark red.
When the protein degrades, myoglobin leaves with the water; it’s red and that’s why people think it’s blood. If you purchase your meat very cold, purge will be released as the temperature rises, depending on which muscle the cut of meat was from, how the meat has been handled and processed, and how long it takes you to shop and drive home. And if you like your steak “bloody,” I’m sorry to tell you that’s not blood; that’s purge.
To purge also means to eliminate. I’m going to do that to my email lists. If people haven’t opened an email in the past year, it’s time to remove them from my list. I don’t make that decision lightly, because there was a reason they subscribed in the first place. In Saturday’s email, I’ll explain why I’m going to trim my list in August.
What are you prepared to do today?
Dr. Chet
Reference: American Meat Science Association. www.meatscience.org.
