MrConsumer has never purchased frozen Salisbury steak dinners, but having read a story from Truth in Advertising about their ingredients, he became curious.
I always (foolishly) assumed that the burger-like patties in these dinners were made from beef. But nay, nay.
*MOUSE PRINT:
In fact, Lean Cuisine’s patty is made from beef and pork.
Worse news came when checking the ingredients statements of some other Salisbury steak dinners.
*MOUSE PRINT:
In these products, beef was no longer the first ingredient in the patties — in fact, it was the last ingredient among the main contents. There was more chicken, pork and water in each patty than beef!
All is not bad news for Salisbury steak lovers. Stouffer’s boldly promotes that its patties are made with 100% beef.
As you probably know, Mr. Consumer, Salisbury Steak got its name during WWI when the Brits felt they needed to rebrand the hamburger by giving it a name that did not include a German city, so even its origins are shrouded in BS. When I read your headline I thought you were going to say that the Lean Cuisine beef patty is made from plankton and extract of palm oil or something equally awful. Since it actually contains meat, I’m ready to applaud them for truth in advertising.
The first three engage in a battle for Protein Supremacy.
Very Lean Cuisine takes it!
Round 2 – Banquet counters with a Madison Avenue “REAL CREAM” bright blue dazzler! You sold me! No need to read that small print below.
Stouffer sat this one out.
There is a federal standard of identity for calling something “Salisbury Steak”, and it requires that the meat content must be predominantly beef. However, up to 25% of the meat “block” can be pork (“fully certified beef heart meat” is also permitted). No poultry is permitted in the meat block under the standard definition.
But there is a way around this (isn’t there always?). Because they are deviating from consumer expectations for traditional all-beef Salisbury steak, the USDA prohibits them from using the unqualified name, “Salisbury Steak”.
To avoid having to call it a “Beef, Pork, and Chicken Patty” (ugh!), the USDA allows a modified product name. The phrase “made with chicken, pork and beef” is an explicitly required, legally binding descriptive modifier. It tells the consumer: “This looks like Salisbury steak and is processed similarly, but we changed the meat formulation to include non-standard species.” The Banquet product seems to follow that route, though I think a product that has more chicken and pork than beef is really stretching the name “Salisbury Steak”.
Incidentally, the standard also allows fillers like cereal, breadcrumbs, cracker meal, or soy protein isolates to be added, but they are strictly capped at 12% of the total product weight (or 6.8% if using isolated soy protein). See, for example, the Lean Cuisine product.
If Clara Peller were only still around.
But the Stouffer’s ingredient list starts with water, before the beef. Similar to Lean Cuisine that has water as the primary ingredient. While the other 2 has water lower on the list.
Therefore I can’t share the optimism with Mr. Consumer as all of these options feel like my best deal is to make my dinner myself and have a glass of water to the side instead of having these “convenience options” with either more water than meat or less beef in the meat labeled steak.