pink slime
1
8.0
- noun
- /pɪŋk slaɪm/
- Literature
:
músculo rosa
- The controversy over pink slime in school lunches sparked a national debate about food safety.
- known as pink slime
Examples
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Many consumers are concerned about the presence of pink slime in their ground beef products.
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Most of us remember seeing or hearing about the multiple ABC news broadcasts beginning last March about how meat packers were adulterating the meat we buy in grocery stores and restaurants with a filler called "pink slime."
Blog text (16) -
So we wind up eating pink slime instead and letting mega-corporate farms take over the food supply.
Blog text (22) -
When the widespread use of pink slime in ground beef came to light, there was a swift and immediate backlash.
Blog text (18) -
After discovering that pink slime was used as a filler, many people chose to buy organic beef instead.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The combination 'pink' + 'slime' transparently yields the image of an unpleasant pink, viscous substance, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will grasp the general negative, gross quality. However, the precise, culturally specific referent — a processed meat byproduct used as filler — is specialized and not directly predictable from the words alone (it is a media/industry coinage), so full meaning requires prior exposure.
Etymology
Pink slime comes from news reports and photos that showed a pale, soft paste used to stretch ground beef. The strong picture of pink colour and slimy texture — pink + slime — made people call it a low-quality 'filler' and 'unappetizing', so the name now means that controversial processed meat product.