Angus beef, schmangus beef

It was impossible recently to escape McDonald's TV commercials for its new Angus beef burger. How many times was the word Angus repeated? Did we really learn anything about the quality of the beef used? Burger King and other fast food franchises also have introduced Angus burgers.

The ShopRite circular I found in today's newspaper trumpets: "Don't settle for just any Angus beef." It urges customers to buy the Certified Angus Beef brand of steaks, roasts and ground meat for $2.49 to $4.99 a pound with the Price Club Card. ShopRite says "less than 8% of beef earns the distinctive" Certified Angus Beef brand. This is the same beef that wealthy celebrity chef Bobby Flay uses at his so-called Burger Palace restaurant in Paramus (see earlier posts, "Hear the sizzle, smell the hype" and "The Bobby Flay hamburger mystery").

What Bobby Flay, McDonald's, Burger King, ShopRite and others don't tell you is how their Angus beef is raised -- confined to feeding pens and given antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products (feed with bits of kitchen scraps and dead animals in it). And if you believe The New York Times and other sources, a lot of ground beef contains feces. How appetizing.

If you want to eat healthy beef from the Angus breed of cattle, you should look for the word "natural" in the brand name, as in Certified Angus Beef Natural. That one word signifies the cattle never received drugs, hormones or animal by-products. In fact, each animal can be traced back to the ranch where it was raised on vegetarian feed.

The Bobby Flay hamburger mystery

I just came across the article in the local newspaper reporting that Bobby Flay was building a hamburger restaurant in Paramus. This story was under a one-column headline on the local news pages, in contrast to the far-more-elaborate story and color photos that appeared last month in the feature pages. The stories had the same byline, both written by the paper's restaurant reviewer.

The mystery is why the first story specified that burgers would be made from Certified Black Angus beef and the second story, despite thousands of additional words, was silent on the kind of beef used beyond a few vague phrases such as "chef's quality." It turns out the first story was in error and should have referred to Certified Angus Beef. It's good, but Certified Angus Beef Natural is far better, because it is raised on vegetarian feed and without antibiotics and growth hormones, and each animal can be traced to its ranch of origin.

Is it possible that Flay, the celebrity chef who has a bad habit of biting his fingernails (you can see it in one of the photos), felt even the lower grade Certified Angus Beef would cut into his bottom line too much and went with something cheaper? Or did the restaurant reviewer screw up? Stay tuned. I will try to find out. (This post has been revised.)