USDA: Don’t Grill Meat This July 4th, Grill Pineapple!
“Creative, healthy ways to use [your] grill”
Obama’s USDA is urging Americans to grill fruit this July Fourth instead of the traditional hamburgers, hotdogs, and other assorted meats. It is estimated that Americans consume about 150 million hotdogs, 700 million pounds of chicken, and 190 million pounds of red meat and pork on the Fourth of July; your government would like to change that.
From The Washington Examiner:
Forget hamburgers and hotdogs — the U.S. Department of Agriculture is pushing people to grill up pineapple slices, peaches, nectarines and other fruit for their big July 4th feast.
. . . If pineapples aren’t your thing, you can try other fruit.
“For something sweet, toss halved peaches or nectarines on the grill and sprinkle with cinnamon,” USDA suggested.
If you don’t want to mess with big, sloppy pieces of fruit, you can cut them into smaller pieces. “Try grilled fruit kabobs!” USDA ventured.
USDA hosted a “Twitter party” this week to talk about creative, healthy ways to use their grills. “Have you tried grilled romaine, avocado, or pineapple?” USDA asked.
Another tweet suggested grilled watermelon slices. “The natural sugars caramelize [to] give them great flavor!” tweeted nutrition expert Elizabeth Somer.
Good grief. At least it’s just the USDA pushing produce and not the White House, but is it just me or does this sort of thing make you want to toss some extra burgers on the grill?
I much preferred when the USDA was worried about how Americans actually spend their Independence Day holiday and posted videos on basic food safety. From two years ago:
Granted, stating that it’s my “patriotic duty” to post questions about food safety to the USDA is a bit over-the-top, but otherwise, this seems a much more reasonable and realistic approach to grilling advice than telling us we should be grilling watermelon, pineapple, and lettuce.
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Comments
I’ve got four full racks of meat in my smoker right now, including baby back ribs, bacon wrapped chicken breasts, and German sausage rings imported from Kansas. My daughter is making a fruit salad, so I’m sure that the USDA is conflicted.
USDA urging Americans to eat more sugar.
No thanks, morons. I’d rather eat meat.
No kidding. It’s like these idiots want us to become prediabetic/diabetic, what with all their “helpful” advice to chow down on carbs all the freaking time ~
This is actually very helpful!
They’ve identified themselves as another whole Department we can safely close.
Is it just me, or does the government no longer work for us? 😉
Howzabout I skip the food entirely, and just cook up a bit of gratuitous carbon footprint?
BBQ ribs lathered in government-free sauce for me.
Make that both government and high fructose corn syrup free sauce.
Would be very interesting to know what the President and his family are eating today. Likewise Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack. I mean, really eating, not what some staffer ‘said’ they ate.
I have tried to explain to people that the USDA no longer follows science, they follow the latest health food fad. Have for decades. Just look over the past 40 some years of ever changing food advice. Eggs bad, eggs good. Coffee bad, coffee good, maybe. Replace fat with Trans-fat, remove trans-fat. Replace sugar with artificial sweeteners, don’t worry about the cancer.
So, if I want a side of warm pineapple with my brisket and also a hot dog, but I don’t eat a bun or put sauce on the meat (APOSTASY)…does it count as “healthy?”
Yeah. Sure.
Because nothing is more patriotic than changing the way we celebrate the most patriotic American holiday.
Oh. Wait!
Now that we are changing things, let’s stop all that firework noise. Let’s shoot confetti into the air instead.
And do some jazz hands with it.
Oh! Just like the supreme court!
Jazz hands is SO last millennium!
It’s all “up-twinkles” now.
It’s be interesting to see what Michelle Obama hogs down this weekend.
Interesting? Wait until we get the bill for her trips.
I grilled lots of protein.
I turned high tech this year. I pre-cook my meats in a sous vide water bath and then finish them off on the grill. This method fully cooks while pasteurizing the meat so that it is perfectly safe to eat a rare burger.
Last night I put a dry rub on some baby back ribs, bagged them and put them in a 160F water bath over night. I will just take them out of the bag, dry them off, slather on the real sugar based BBQ sauce and grill them a few minutes a side .
Check out some vous vide recipes on YouTube.
We didn’t claw our way up the food chain to eat fruit.