> Again, I don't know if they're using ammonia gas on the beef trimmings, but assuming that they are, then you've managed to conflate two different chemicals
No, they are the same chemical for the purposes of this discussion. Any form of ammonia you eat -- whether ammonium bicarbonate or ammonium sulfate in bread, or ammonia residues in meat -- will be found as ammonium hydroxide in your blood. It's the same stuff. And the consequences of that extra ammonia in your body are precisely nothing. A ten ounce serving of pure pink slime (you know you want it) might give you a whopping hundred milligram boost of ammonia. That's 10 to 20 times less ammonia (nitrogen equivalent) than a typical adult pisses out every day.
My numbers in that comment are a bit off. I looked up my last blood test, and my UUN number was close to 20 g/day. This means that every day my body is producing two hundred times more ammonia than what you'd get eating a big pile of pink slime.
I'm taking pains in this thread to point out that I'm vegetarian, and even aside from that, I'd rather eat out of the trash than make LFTB a regular part of my diet. But that's not because of some imaginary risk from trace ammonia.
Can you tell me what the affect of dietary ammonia are on folks suffering from IBS/IBD? Food spends time in your body before it makes it to your bloodstream.
(I’ve got a kid that already avoids hard cheeses because it upsets him and bread for celiac reasons, so...).
Even at the highest levels allowed by the FDA, dietary ammonia is unlikely to have any noticeable effect. The tens of milligrams of ammonia your child would get from a large serving of cheese is insignificant compared to the ammonia produced by his own gut flora. And it's truly harmless compared to the the toxins he gets from an intestinal microbial overgrowth (such as a pylori infection) which may very well be the most prominent cause of intestinal disorders.
Even at higher levels than those allowed in food, I've seen no evidence that ammonia has any intraluminal effects beyond smooth muscle hypertonia. So even if your child somehow ingested more significant amounts of ammonia, for example from cleaning products, the worst symptoms will be some cramping. Note that I'm not talking about ingestion of concentrated ammonia, which is a corrosive hazard.
Think of it this way: if your child really was affected by dietary ammonia, you'd have to avoid a lot more than hard cheese. Foods containing more ammonia than pink slime include nearly all cheeses, cured meats, peanut butter, onions, mayonnaise, and others. If ammonia really was a problem then we'd all be pretty screwed.
No, they are the same chemical for the purposes of this discussion. Any form of ammonia you eat -- whether ammonium bicarbonate or ammonium sulfate in bread, or ammonia residues in meat -- will be found as ammonium hydroxide in your blood. It's the same stuff. And the consequences of that extra ammonia in your body are precisely nothing. A ten ounce serving of pure pink slime (you know you want it) might give you a whopping hundred milligram boost of ammonia. That's 10 to 20 times less ammonia (nitrogen equivalent) than a typical adult pisses out every day.