According to nutritionists, sausage can be classified as one of the most harmful food products. Despite this, she has a lot of fans - after all, sausages are much more affordable than meat, as they are cheaper.
What are sausages
Sausage products are food products made from minced meat or offal. For the manufacture of such products, one or several varieties or types of meat are used, as well as various additives.
The quality of sausages, like other types of similar products, is closely related to the price - the higher the meat content, the more expensive they are. And vice versa, the cheaper the sausage, sausages or wieners, the more various additives they contain.
There are several types of sausages, depending on the technology of their preparation:
- boiled and boiled-smoked, - semi-smoked, - uncooked smoked, - dry-cured, - liverworts.
The comparative cheapness of sausages is explained by the low content of natural meat in them. The lack of raw materials is made up in various ways. Sometimes a special emulsion is used from ground and boiled bones, various by-products and even meat processing waste. Often, after boiling (one of the stages of making boiled sausages), a rather unappetizing outwardly gray mass is obtained. Despite the fact that the gray color is quite natural in this case - it is enough just to remember the shade of a boiled piece of beef, at the next stage dyes are added to the sausage. Soy protein is added to the cheapest varieties of sausages, which allows them to further reduce their cost. And the taste in this case is "supported" with the help of various spices, salt and chemical additives.
Sausage products made from chicken meat are distinguished by a lower cost. Due to the fact that these raw materials are less expensive, manufacturers do not seek in any way to reduce the amount of natural raw materials by adding starch or soy.
"Tasteful" secrets of sausage
Unfortunately, in addition to adding traditional "meat" seasonings to the sausage making process, manufacturers are increasingly adding various chemicals that enhance the taste, as well as brighten the color and aroma of the sausages. Often, starch is also used, which retains excess water in the sausage - and so they try to save money. Of course, the finished product will be cheap, but its taste is likely to be very far from perfect.
Sometimes the water in which the sausages or wieners were cooked turns reddish or pink, which has nothing to do with the color of, for example, beef broth. This may serve as evidence that dyes were used in the production of sausage products, that is, the level of meat in them is so low that it did not even give the desired color.
The cheapest, but not the worst
One of the cheapest sausages is liverwurst. Various internal organs are usually used as raw materials for it: the heart, lungs, diaphragm and trachea, as well as the liver. However, even in this type of sausage, unscrupulous manufacturers sometimes use too many spices and protein additives. It should be noted that liver sausages can surpass products based on minced meat in terms of nutritional value and the content of various nutrients (in particular, vitamin D).
