Challenging Walmart: Experiences with Low-Quality Meats

[Greg Freeman]

I have to admit, I liked the fact that when I moved out west here, there was a super walmart about a mile away from my apartment, and a walmart grocery the same distance in the opposite direction. However, I recently bought some steaks, frozen salmon filets, and scallops there that made me seriously reconsider the benefit of location.

I made the steaks one night, and the night I cooked them they didn't have a regular, steak-like texture I'm used to. In fact, they also had a slightly bad flavor that was enough to turn me off after I reheated a couple that I had cooked for lunch. I ended up throwing the rest out.

Not to mention, the night that I made the steaks fresh I made a special batch of steak cooked alongside some previously frozen scallops I also purchased there. By themselves, they both tasted bad. Together, the horrible components were overwhelming. That was by far, the worst meal I have ever cooked for myself and it wasn't because my cooking skill was lacking.


Today I ran over to Whole Foods, found some really thin sirloin tip steaks and a good beer (Brother Thelonious, I highly recommend), and after searing them for about a minute a side I got some very tasty steak that only required lemon, vinegar, and salt and pepper of unknown proportion before cooking. About 1000 times better than the walmart steaks.


Have you ever gotten good meat from walmart? I love the selection at Whole Foods, but I don't want to go to the poor house from eating delicious food.

 

[Moonbear]

Please tell me you have an option somewhere between WalMart and Whole Foods! I would not buy meat from a WalMart. I don't know, I just wouldn't trust it...and your post just verified my fears. To sell it cheap, it would have to be really cheap cuts, and I just don't think a store that big would pay a lot of attention as meat comes into the loading dock to make sure it is properly refrigerated at all times. I'm not even comfortable buying non-perishable foods from a WalMart. I would just wonder if they were old or stale or cut corners on ingredients.

But, yeah, I wouldn't want to pay Whole Foods prices either. Those stores are insane! I prefer just plain old regular grocery stores for foods.

 

[Cyrus]

Always buy quality food, no matter the price. Its going into your body.

I hope all wall marts go out of business and small grocery shops return.

 

[Greg Freeman]

There are other grocery stores (like Trader Joe's and Von's) but Trader joe's selection is pretty limited and Vons doesn't have a good selection of beer, cheese, or vegetables/fruit. I like to grab random strange veggies and fruit that I haven't tried before and I just can't do that at a regular grocery store. Maybe I'll just accept the fact that I'm eating expensive food.

I need a good selection of cheese though. A good fat source, and lactose intolerance counts out anything but high quality goat cheese. The guy at the deli today got me to try some wine salami with goat cheese and sundried tomatoes, wow. I was already buying the salami but that goat cheese was amazing. I know what I'll be doing for lunch tomorrow.

 

[Greg Freeman]

I hope all wall marts go out of business and small grocery shops return.

See, I like buying cheap supplies like gallon sized bags and all the mundane things at walmart. I'd never buy furniture there or beef probably ever again unless something miraculous happens.

I thought their fruit/vegetable selection was good until I got sick off an avocado there that looked okay, but really wasn't. And plums that had started to ferment

 

[edward]

Be sure to take a close look at the expiration date on any red meat products. Last year many meat packers, including Walmart, started putting carbon monoxide inside of the sealed packages.

The CO keeps the meat looking red and fresh even when it is far past the "sell by" date.

A lot of the salmon currently sold is grown in fish farms. It doesn't turn pink naturally so they color it with a dye.

Walmart in order to prevent their own meat packers from unionizing, has started outsourcing their meat packing.

 

[Greg Freeman]

The date on the meat was good, but the texture and taste suggested otherwise.

And the salmon tasted horrible, ugh.

 

[Moonbear]

There are other grocery stores (like Trader Joe's and Von's) but Trader joe's selection is pretty limited and Vons doesn't have a good selection of beer, cheese, or vegetables/fruit. I like to grab random strange veggies and fruit that I haven't tried before and I just can't do that at a regular grocery store. Maybe I'll just accept the fact that I'm eating expensive food.

I need a good selection of cheese though. A good fat source, and lactose intolerance counts out anything but high quality goat cheese. The guy at the deli today got me to try some wine salami with goat cheese and sundried tomatoes, wow. I was already buying the salami but that goat cheese was amazing. I know what I'll be doing for lunch tomorrow.

You're not going to find that selection at WalMart either. I've never heard of Von's. I thought Trader Joe's was a snobby store like Whole Foods...are they not? (We don't have any of them around here.) I'd hate my choices to be limited to snobby stores or WalMart. I'm kind of wondering what sort of demographic lives in your area that those would be your choices. The last time I lived in a place with a WalMart and Whole Foods store so close together was in MI, and it was a strange town practically divided in the middle between those monstrous houses on golf courses owned by wealthy people and really small houses scattered in subdivisions along with inexpensive apartments for the poor people (including me as a post doc). But, we also still had a regular grocery store...not a great selection there, but it sufficed.

You could always buy the staples at the grocery store and treat yourself to Whole Foods for the better quality meats and cheeses.

 

[Cyrus]

The one place I like is target. They have stuff cheap that's good, like deodorant, shaving supplies, and sodas etc cheap. If I want meat, I'll buy it from a middle eastern halal market because its the highest quality you can find usually. Or go to a kosher store.

Never be cheap on meat. Ever.

 

[Greg Freeman]

Las Vegas, demographic guaranteed to be weird. The difference between the poor and rich part of town is about a 1 mile, and I live on the boundary.

Snobby? I don't know if I'd call Whole Foods snobby except for a select few of the people that shop there and think they poop greener than everyone else. I've never had a deli guy recommend something to me before, and I like that kind of consideration (yeah, of course he was trying to sell some cheese, but he went through the time to talk to me and find out I had lactose problems, etc. so that he could help me find something I would like. Gotta love good old capitalism). Trader Joe's was plain weird, lots of hawaiian style foods and all that. The prices weren't as bad as Whole Foods but their selection was limited to some kind of strange market sample.

 

[Greg Freeman]

If I want meat, I'll buy it from a middle eastern halal market because its the highest quality you can find usually. Or go to a kosher store.

Never be cheap on meat. Ever.

I'll have to seek out a good market, because I've been wanting to fool around with meats aside from the standard beef/chicken/pork. I enjoy a good piece of lamb here and there but have never cooked it myself. Also maybe venison or something more exotic would be good for a change.

 

[Moonbear]

The date on the meat was good, but the texture and taste suggested otherwise.

And the salmon tasted horrible, ugh.

How many stickers were on the meat? I sometimes am highly suspicious of the "sale" sticker that manages to cover the previous sell by date.

When I was a kid, there was a local grocery store that eventually went out of business...we found out from a neighbor whose teenage son had gotten a job in their meat department that they were taking meats past the sell-by date from the case, dipping them into something (a dye or some such...I hardly remember I was so young when I heard it) to disguise that it was old meat, and repackaging with a new sell-by date and putting it on sale. We NEVER bought meat from there (nor much of anything else).

The other thing that might make meat taste "off" without it really being spoiled is if they're buying the meat that is bruised or otherwise lower grades that other places wouldn't sell. Instead of being proper beef cattle, it could be the culled dairy cattle being sold as meat...tougher, not as tasty, pretty much a grade above dog food. I would not put it past them. I limit my WalMart purchases to things I don't expect or need or want to last long or that they can't screw up (like you mentioned, things like plastic bags). I did get a couple of pairs of shoes there, but only intended to wear them when teaching gross anatomy and got lucky they are lasting fairly well (of course they're rather ugly...but incredibly comfortable for being on my feet all day).

 

[Greg Freeman]

I don't think the meat had multiple stickers. What was weird was that it wasn't tough. It had almost no texture at all. There was no noticeable grain, like the muscles of the animal had never been used, it was almost homogeneous "meat substance" in the shape of strip/rib meat. ...I also bought a few dress shirts from walmart, and then I realized everything was tailored for tall, fat people with short arms. I can hardly find cheap dress shirts for tall, skinny people with long arms. That I can suffer through though, not bad meat. I need the meat of an animal that has run around on its own, foraged here and there, maybe got a little animal breeding action, and finally got taken out for food. The whole cattle pen thing is pretty gross.

 

[Cyrus]

I don't think the meat had multiple stickers. What was weird was that it wasn't tough. It had almost no texture at all. There was no noticeable grain, like the muscles of the animal had never been used, it was almost homogeneous "meat substance" in the shape of strip/rib meat.


...I also bought a few dress shirts from walmart, and then I realized everything was tailored for tall, fat people with short arms. I can hardly find cheap dress shirts for tall, skinny people with long arms. That I can suffer through though, not bad meat. I need the meat of an animal that has run around on its own, foraged here and there, maybe got a little animal breeding action, and finally got taken out for food. The whole cattle pen thing is pretty gross.

You have to get it custom made. I literally can't buy a shirt my size- anywhere. I got two made, fits perfectly. Never going to get one that isn't custom anymore. They just don't fit.

 

[Moonbear]

The one place I like is target. They have stuff cheap that's good, like deodorant, shaving supplies, and sodas etc cheap. If I want meat, I'll buy it from a middle eastern halal market because its the highest quality you can find usually. Or go to a kosher store.

Never be cheap on meat. Ever.

Why do you think that's better quality? It's just a different method of killing the animals, but doesn't mean they're any better quality. The only time I'd look for Kosher foods and consider it better would be for things like beef hot dogs or other beef sausages because I'd know they won't have other fillers in them.

I don't need the meat that Whole Foods sells...I don't really need my steak to come from cattle that have each been individually pampered and given a name and only grazed on pastures with organic grass or whatever nonsense they sell. On the other hand, I wouldn't go "cheap" like WalMart, because I do value my health and don't need E. coli as the secret ingredient. There's a lot that is decent quality but still inexpensive that I prefer.

(But, boy, I'm going to get spoiled on fresh eggs. We have something ridiculous like 300 chickens on the farm right now that nothing is being done to except monitoring their production by weighing the eggs daily and then the eggs would just get thrown out...so I've been getting dozens of free, fresh eggs. It's going to be tough when the experiment begins and we can't have their eggs anymore...but they have to have a control group, right? I have learned that you can't make hard boiled eggs from fresh eggs though. They have to be at least 2 weeks old before you can hard boil them and be able to get the shells off without them sticking to the whites...just tells you how old the eggs in the stores are that I've never run into this problem before. But, even with the shells removing a bunch of the white, I've never had such tasty hard boiled eggs before. )

 

[Cyrus]

Why do you think that's better quality? It's just a different method of killing the animals, but doesn't mean they're any better quality. The only time I'd look for Kosher foods and consider it better would be for things like beef hot dogs or other beef sausages because I'd know they won't have other fillers in them.

Just walk into a good halal meat market. The meat looks completely different from a grocery store. Its bright red and FRESH. The stuff in the super markets are light red/white-ish.

The halal meat place will take a big slab of meat and cut what you want right infront of you.

 

[scorpa]

Reading this thread makes me glad I am from a farm and almost never have to actually buy meat from a grocery store. I get the good stuff and get to skip the store :) I would never by groceries from Walmart, actually I never buy anything from Walmart because I really am not a fan of the store and have had a few friends work there for awhile and know how badly they treat their employees. I have a beautiful save on foods grocery store near where I live so I am quite lucky, they always have nice produce.

 

[Moonbear]

...I also bought a few dress shirts from walmart, and then I realized everything was tailored for tall, fat people with short arms. I can hardly find cheap dress shirts for tall, skinny people with long arms.

Did you look around you at the other people shopping there? Yeah, the only clothes I can buy at WalMart are t-shirts. And even then, I only get the ones there that I know I'm going to quickly destroy being chewed on by sheep or washing often with bleach. They don't usually last long from there.

I need the meat of an animal that has run around on its own, foraged here and there, maybe got a little animal breeding action, and finally got taken out for food. The whole cattle pen thing is pretty gross.

Um, you really don't want meat from an animal that has been breeding or running around a lot. That's how you get tough meat, or bruised meat. Good beef comes from steers that put on weight quickly to build up lots of tasty meat rather than putting that energy into breeding (in case you didn't know, steers are castrated while calves...no breeding going on).

 

[Greg Freeman]

(But, boy, I'm going to get spoiled on fresh eggs. We have something ridiculous like 300 chickens on the farm right now that nothing is being done to except monitoring their production by weighing the eggs daily and then the eggs would just get thrown out...so I've been getting dozens of free, fresh eggs. It's going to be tough when the experiment begins and we can't have their eggs anymore...but they have to have a control group, right? I have learned that you can't make hard boiled eggs from fresh eggs though. They have to be at least 2 weeks old before you can hard boil them and be able to get the shells off without them sticking to the whites...just tells you how old the eggs in the stores are that I've never run into this problem before. But, even with the shells removing a bunch of the white, I've never had such tasty hard boiled eggs before. )

Okay I'm jealous now. I'd love to have fresh eggs since I eat them every morning. I have to settle for supposed Omega-3 eggs. I've never had 'em fresh before.


I was upset because where I used to live there was a farmers market that sold fresh meat (but I couldn't afford it on a grad student salary) and milk. I wanted to try to the milk so bad but I knew better that to put myself through that.

 

[Moonbear]

Just walk into a good halal meat market. The meat looks completely different from a grocery store. Its bright red and FRESH. The stuff in the super markets are light red/white-ish.

The halal meat place will take a big slab of meat and cut what you want right infront of you.

The meat in the grocery stores here are bright red and fresh too. Though, I have been in grocery stores where it wasn't, but those are the stores I don't go back to. Any butcher shop will give you good meat. And, around here, if you don't like what's in the meat case, the grocery stores also have butcher cases with better meats, or you can talk to the butcher and get something ordered. It has nothing to do with being Halal, it is just a matter of freshness that you're talking about.

 

[Greg Freeman]

Did you look around you at the other people shopping there? Yeah, the only clothes I can buy at WalMart are t-shirts. And even then, I only get the ones there that I know I'm going to quickly destroy being chewed on by sheep or washing often with bleach. They don't usually last long from there.



Um, you really don't want meat from an animal that has been breeding or running around a lot. That's how you get tough meat, or bruised meat. Good beef comes from steers that put on weight quickly to build up lots of tasty meat rather than putting that energy into breeding (in case you didn't know, steers are castrated while calves...no breeding going on).

Yeah, the walmarts here are entertaining in their own ways. The first time I went to one when I moved here there was an old lady, wearing a dirty wedding dress (that was turning gray), in a wheelchair, pulling herself forward with her feet and hitting herself in the head while laughing manically. Not to mention the landwhales.


I guess I don't know a whole lot about ranching/meat production. All I know is that I can recognize a quality steak when I bite into it.

 

[Cyrus]

The meat in the grocery stores here are bright red and fresh too. Though, I have been in grocery stores where it wasn't, but those are the stores I don't go back to. Any butcher shop will give you good meat. And, around here, if you don't like what's in the meat case, the grocery stores also have butcher cases with better meats, or you can talk to the butcher and get something ordered. It has nothing to do with being Halal, it is just a matter of freshness that you're talking about.

I know, but most of the super markets around here have real bad meat, unless you go to whole meats, which will charge you an arm and a leg. So, Id rather pay my local butcher than whole foods.

The most 'snooty' grocery store I've been to is Balduccis. There you can buy 300 caviar, sold by the oz. It was freaking expensive for stuff there, and I needed some odd ingredient so I went there hoping they would have it. But they didnt...

http://www.balduccis.com/

 

[Greg Freeman]

After listening to you guys i googled up a local butcher. I think I'm going to try them next time

 

[Cyrus]

My biggest grip is this. I walk into a butcher, it SMELLS like meat.

I walk into a sea food store, it SMELLS like fish.

I walk into a super market, and it smells like PINESAL. It should be an explosion of smells of FOOD. They have no smell, its odd...everythings in a can, with LOTS of sugar, and preservatives.

Half the time I don't buy something I see because I am like, why don't I just buy a box of sugar and eat that instead?

 

[Moonbear]

I know, but most of the super markets around here have real bad meat, unless you go to whole meats, which will charge you an arm and a leg. So, Id rather pay my local butcher than whole foods.

I guess that's a good thing about being in a rural state. People here know the difference between fresh meat and old meat and won't tolerate stores selling the bad stuff. The worst place I lived for buying meat was Cincinnati. I don't think the people living there knew that meat didn't grow in styrofoam trays, and the quality was AWFUL. Fortunately, there was a store about 20 min north of the city that was a HUGE international grocery store with really good quality, fresh meats, seafood and produce (their produce section was about the size of most grocery stores...it was like an indoor farmer's market). And, that place had the lowest prices too! It was worth the drive to shop there. How many times have you walked into a seafood section of the store and the fish you were going to buy were still swimming in the tanks? It was that fresh. I miss the fresh fish; that's something I can't get here. I don't even know how they got it into OH...must have had a nearby fish farm to bring them in still live (I don't care if they're farm raised...I know I'm not getting any fresh fish shipped in from the ocean to landlocked states that quickly).

 

[mcknia07]

I don't like to shop at Wal-Mart. Like someone else said, maybe just for their cheap t-shirts.

For most of the other things, I like to go to Meijer's. Their meat products aren't bad, and the produce is really good too. Really not bad on prices either. Everytime I go in there, i stock my cart with all the fruits and veggies, and they have a lot of health food things too.

Our family drinks a lot of rice milk, because we are lactose intolerent, and we hardly ever buy meat. We used to be vegans and we kinda got back into eating some meats, but that has been after like 10 years or so.

 

[binzing]

My town of 50,000 has TWO! super Walmarts. The first one (which started as a regular sized one) had a guy shot down in the parking lot by cops for beating his wife. The newer one has a fatal (I think...) stabbing, the FIRST week it was open! Down with Walmart.

 

[edward]

Fast foods are terrible for the most part. I wonder where they get their meat?

Here is a neat link on fast foods.

http://www.fatcalories.com/srbars_fatcals.cfm

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I live in Huntington Beach CA, and we have EVERYTHING around here. There are at least two 99 cent stores, WalMart, Target, more hole in the wall grocers than I could say, Ralph's, Albertson's, Stater Brothers, Vons AND Vons Pavillions, Plowboys (which I've never heard of until it showed up recently), Trader Joe's, Mother's Market (whole foods store), at least one butcher that I know of, a few bakeries, and a bread store. Oh and Beverages & More! *drool*
On top of that, being in SoCal, all you have to do is drive a few extra blocks in any direction and you'll be in the next city with even more to choose from. I grew up thinking this was normal and it really weirded me out going to other states where it's not like this.

To answer the OP... No, I wouldn't trust about anything from WalMart. But there are at least five grocers to choose from all with in two blocks of my house and then the butcher across the street.

http://www.traderjoes.com/about_tjs.html pretty much sells product from local and independant producers instead of major brands. So they have lots of micro brew beers and local produce and meats and the like. Considering what you're paying for the prices aren't too bad.

 

[Moonbear]

My town of 50,000 has TWO! super Walmarts. The first one (which started as a regular sized one) had a guy shot down in the parking lot by cops for beating his wife. The newer one has a fatal (I think...) stabbing, the FIRST week it was open! Down with Walmart.

I'd hardly blame WalMart for thing happening in the parking lot by customers. Afterall, if there was no WalMart, those people would still be living in the town and doing that someplace else. That's more reflective of location.

My biggest concern with WalMart is how they obtain the products they sell...in terms of bullying manufacturers to make the product cheaper (and more prone to breaking quickly), which is why I limit my purchases to things where quality really isn't much of an issue. The other thing I have a problem with about WalMart stores, and every single one I've been in has this problem, even the one here that's only about a year old, is they always look DIRTY and cluttered inside. While that's not such a big deal if I'm there to buy flower pots or lawn fertilizer, it is if I'm there to buy food. If they can't even keep the part of the store where the customers are clean, what condition do you think the warehouse and loading dock area are in?

 

[lisab]

My town of 50,000 has TWO! super Walmarts. The first one (which started as a regular sized one) had a guy shot down in the parking lot by cops for beating his wife. The newer one has a fatal (I think...) stabbing, the FIRST week it was open! Down with Walmart.

Low-priced, low-quality crap makes people NUTS!

 

[turbo]

My wife and I are pretty lucky. We are a few miles from a farm that raises free-range Black Angus - WAY better than the meat in the stores. There are also a couple of small one-man outfits locally that raise free-range turkeys, and there's another old fellow that raises chickens and he's currently getting overloaded with eggs. We buy them from him for $1/dozen. There's nothing like a grilled fried-egg sandwich on rye with some spicy mustard and hot salsa.

 

[Greg Freeman]

Update:

The chicken thighs I recently got for whole foods, while still good according to their expiration date, smelled horrible when I opened the package. I had to toss them out and eat out instead. I also noticed that the bacon that I bought there only a few days ago actually expired in April!

Today I went to Trader Joes and bought up a whole bunch of fresh food for much less than I would've spent at whole foods. I just wish the butcher I found here had been open on Sundays, because I would've been able to get some better meat...

 

[jim mcnamara]

...Walmart in order to prevent their own meat packers from unionizing, has started outsourcing their meat packing.

Assuming this is correct, wouldn't the boat trip to and from India be a deal breaker
Talk about past the expiration date...

 

[jim mcnamara]

.. Not to mention the landwhales.
I guess I don't know a whole lot about ranching/meat production. All I know is that I can recognize a quality steak when I bite into it.

landwhales == Walmart Megafauna

The way to get really good beef, which seems to be your main desire, is to buy dry-aged prime beef.

This is what you find in good restaurants. There are several reasons that it is expensive.

Prime beef is more expensive - it has fat marbling which increases flavor and tenderness.
Dry-aged beef is hung at 35-38F for 28+ days. Then the outer dry layer is scraped off.
The aged meat has lost moisture, and meat mass, This means the yield has gone down, so the price goes up per pound. Plus, the meat store/restaurant has increased carrying costs, so the price goes up even more. If you want really good meat, going any other route is a crapshoot. Really good beef looks very different from grocery store/Walmat wet-aged beef.
It is a lot darker, and has fat marbling.