By Philip Rosenbaum
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) – The beef industry – trying to appease increasingly health-conscious Americans while keeping a stronghold on their palates – is declaring a war on fat.
As chicken and other poultry wins American hearts and minds, the Beef Industry Council is fighting back with low-fat ground beef.
Fast-food outlets have started using various forms of the leaner meat and shoppers at about 8,500 supermarkets can find it in the meat case. The industry wants to get low-fat hamburger on more school-lunch menus.
McDonald’s began selling the McLean Deluxe burger in April, marking the major market debut for carrageenan, a seaweed-based carbohydrate that helps the meat retain moisture and flavor in place of fat. Hardee’s has also started selling a leaner burger.
Last week, industry officials introduced oat bran as a fat replacement in new beef and pork products that could hit the market in late fall.
While Americans still eat more red meat than chicken, the trend has been favoring poultry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Preliminary 1990 figures show 112.3 pounds of red meat were consumed per person, down from 123.9 pounds in 1983, the USDA said. Consumption of chicken and turkey – seen by many as a healthier alternative to red meat – rose to 63.6 pounds per person in 1990 from 45.8 pounds in 1983.
Trying to regain the ground lost to chicken and other poultry, the Beef Industry Council on Tuesday came to New York’s opulent Waldorf Astoria hotel – world renowned for its salad – to celebrate the virtues of low fat ground beef.
Served buffet style, the meat was slipped into burritos and molded into meatloaf.
“The consumer is the primary beneficiary of the beef industry’s ongoing effort to develop great-tasting, low-fat meat products,” Barbara Cope, Chief of Commodity Procurement at USDA’s Livestock and Seed Division, said at a news conference put on by the council.
Cope supports a plan to purchase low-fat ground beef patties for the USDA’s National School Lunch Program. A search for contractors was underway, she said.
Between 1987 and 1988, the Beef Industry Council and the Beef Board invested more than $ 373,000 for the development of low-fat ground beef.
The Beef Industry Council, a national federation of 44 state beef councils that works to build consumer demand for beef, says the meat contains 10 percent or less fat.
According to USDA rules, meats labeled ‘extra lean’ must have 5 percent or less fat content. Meats labeled ‘lean or low fat’ must contain no more than 10 percent fat. Packaging labeled ‘lite,’ ‘lighter,’ ‘leaner’ or ‘lower fat’ must contain 25 percent less fat than similar products on the market, according to Jim Green of the USDA.
But hope is alive for meat purists.
Ground-beef concoctions are not the only way meat eaters can lower fat intake, according to Dr. Margo Denke, an assistant professor at the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and a member of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee.
“You can include regular meat in your diet by paying attention to portion size and cut,” as an alternative to buying specially produced low fat beef, Denke said.
“People want to have their cake and eat it too. They want low fat meat and good taste,” she said.
The American Heart Association suggests limiting daily meat intake to 6 ounces, Denke said.
After a blitz of studies and media reports on the dangers of a high-fat, low fiber diet – the meat industry was compelled to respond, says Chuck Lambert, director of economics at the Denver-based National Cattlemen’s Association.
The Cattlemen’s Association, with the Beef Industry Council, set a goal in 1989 to reduce trimmable fat on beef products by 20 percent by 1995. Measures to reach that goal would include biotechnology aimed at producing leaner cattle.
PHILIP ROSENBAUM 