Does anyone here agree that Canadians are being cheated in buying meat?

[glarius]

I believe they are loading out meat with WATER!
Here's what I'm talking about....For some time now, I have noticed that I buy a big, fat package of ground beef to make hamburgers and when I make large patties, cook them in a non-stick frying pan, I am left with cooked patties about 1/2 the size they were when I put them in the pan, and a whole lot of water. I never use oil or anything else in the pan...just the patties alone. The same is true of steak. I always end up with smaller pieces of meat and a lot of water.
This was not true in the past and I just wonder if any of my fellow Canadians have noticed the same thing?

[CHIMO]

1. Nope

Don't use processed meats. You should read "Dying for a Hamburger".
But I would expect that what you are saying is correct. Have a look at butter. Salted butter has much more water than non-salted. So salted may be less expensive.

I believe that it has also occurred with chicken.

[laundry_queen]

2. Yep, noticed it.

In fact, things like that have gotten so bad, along with finding chunks of slime and feathers on my chicken that I never used to find (seriously, one time I spent a half hour plucking drumsticks before I could use them) that I've been slowly trying to switch to vegetarian. Key word is slowly. I have meat eating kids that dislike a lot of veggie meals so instead going completely veggie from having meat every night it's about twice a week we have meat now.

I will say the worst stuff I've noticed is Costco. The meat LOOKS good and SEEMS fresher than at other places, but my dad actually ruined an *oven* cooking chicken wings. He was baking 2 cookie sheets full and the steam from the wings fried the computer chip/board/whatever on the oven. The moisture coming from the chicken was too much and vented into the console area. That amount of steam never used to happen. The ground beef there is bad too and I buy lean. I find No Frill's okay (I think that's Loblaws) their extra lean doesn't shrink at all compared to Costco's. But yeah, compared to when I started cooking all the time (15 or so years ago) it's changed radically. We now pay for watered down meat.

[glarius]

3. The reason they're watering it is to make it weigh more....

You're paying for much less meat than you think you are. Why hasn't the government done something about this? We've always had good government quality control in the past.

[laundry_queen]

4. Yes, we now pay for water.

It's a total rip off. I mean, obviously the meat industry knows it's going on because there are some brands that advertise, 'no water' but I think that's just chicken. As for why the gov't hasn't done something - probably has something to do with a conservative gov't and I'm sure it's technically legal for them to do that. Harper would never do a darn thing to go against meat producers. I wonder if we all complained about false advertising? I think there are laws about not getting what you paid for. Wrote to Marketplace? (don't laugh, they did a really good piece on antibiotic resistance and superbugs in meat) I dunno, I doubt anything would happen.

[laundry_queen]

5. Found an interesting link:

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/labeti/retdet/bulletins/meavia/phosphe.shtml

I'll have to look next time I go shopping. Seems to me they need to say if there's water in it? I wonder if a complaint to CFIA would do anything?