eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Mike Loew goes undercover in this collection of transcripts of calls he's made to a variety of organizations. Every word in the book is from Mike's real conversations with:
--a temp agency, inquiring about hiring slaves
--a sausage factory, as a vegetarian
--a yoga center, as a man seeking treatment for a bone sticking out of his arm
--the office of The Drug Czar, seeking the man behind the title
--a car dealership, as the seller of a car possessed by an evil spirit
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250095725 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Mike Loew is an editor of The Onion, and one of the authors of the bestselling Our Dumb Century.
Read an Excerpt
Tough Call
Hard-Hitting Phone Pranks
By Mike Loew
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2000 Mike LoewAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-09572-5
CHAPTER 1
THE MEAT MARKET
More Americans than ever are deciding to adopt a vegetarian diet, but this decision is by no means an easy one. While wrestling with his inner carnivore, Mike Loew turns to meat industry experts to justify his love for their delicious food products.
DER SAUSAGE HAUS
Hi, my name is Mike, and I'm calling you from Los Angeles because I'm in a tough situation. I think I need your help. Now, I love eating meat, but lately the vegetarian people have been getting to me. I've been hearing about the health risks of eating meat, and I'm wondering if you could help me stay true to beef.
Der Sausage Lady: Excuse me?
The vegetarian people have been talking about the dangers of eating meat, the contaminants in it, and I'm wondering if you could help me out, because I don't want my love affair with meat to end.
Uh-huh, right. So what would you like help with?
I want you to convince me to remain a meat-eater.
Me? Convince you? I think that's within yourself, sir. Our sausages are free of MSG and preservatives, that's all I can tell you.
Gosh, do they actually contain dead animals?
(sighs impatiently) Excuse me a minute.
Different Sausage Lady: Hello, can I help you?
Hi, my name is Mike, and I need help. A lot of vegetarian people have been talking to me about the dangers of eating meat, and I'm calling you to help me remain a meat-eater.
(emits amused chuckle) Well, that's personal preference, to become a meat-eater, but I don't see any proven studies that ... I mean, your body needs meat, as well as it needs dairy, as well as it needs a few vegetables.
I've been worrying that I would be less manly if I don't eat meat. I mean, can you find many powerful hormones in a garden salad?
Well, I don't know about that. Maybe a chemist is the person you want to talk to, or a scientist or something. But I don't think that not eating meat makes you less of a man.
Well, that's good to know!
Not at all. (chuckles) Yes, meat's good for you, but you've got to eat up the whole food chain, and fish and everything. So people can't tell you that.
That sounds delicious. Thank you!
Okay, bye-bye.
LARRY'S BUTCHER SHOP
Hi, my name is Mike, and I'm calling you up from Los Angeles because I'm in a pretty sticky situation. Now I'm a meat-eater, but lately a lot of vegetarian people have been getting to me, talking about the dangers of eating meat. I'm calling some meat people, just trying to stay faithful to meat. I'm wondering if you can help me.
Larry: Well, what would you like to know?
I'm wondering if it's true that many USDA meat inspectors don't let their children eat hamburgers anymore.
Totally untrue. In fact, meat consumption in general, especially beef, is up almost 3 percent this year.
Wow.
Let me tell you a little bit. I don't know if you know the story about the situation that happened where the youngsters died by eating contaminated beef. I can tell you the story behind that.
The story you won't read in the newspapers?
Well, the real story. Because those kinds of things that are printed bring concern to all of us. But let me tell you something: what was found inside of those hamburger patties was animal feces. Okay, that's something you didn't hear. That's where the sickness started from, and that's why the children died. They were eating waste materials. The meat inspector for the plant that sent these patties out thought it looked like almost a sabotage situation. Because the live animal comes in one end of the building, and the finished product is shipped from the opposite end of the building. And between these two ends of the building is a quality-control laboratory, which you have in all processing plants. For the waste products from the animal to get into the finished product on the opposite end of the building — and this is a building that employs roughly 3,000 employees — for that to happen, it almost had to be deliberate. And if that did happen, which is what they feel happened, somebody took as much as a ton of animal waste and dumped it into the finished product, which was ground and processed and frozen and shipped out. It should have been caught by the quality-control lab, but it was not.
Do you ever worry about eating animal feces?
Let me put it to you this way — there's restaurants that I supply that I would not eat at. But that has nothing to do with what they're buying. It has everything to do with how it's handled. If you're going to get sick from a restaurant, it's not going to be because the meat was bad. It's going to be because the meat was not handled properly. And it was tainted or it was old or something like that. I'm a fresh meat market. I don't sell anything frozen, because I never wanted anyone to say I'm hiding something because I'm freezing it.
Does that go on?
Certainly, it does. Large packing plants do that all the time. Where you're really going to get sick is the fast-food end of the restaurant business, because the majority of your burger joints are run by fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids. Stop and think about that for a minute. They have absolutely no responsibility — and I have teenagers, so I know — and teenagers just don't take things as seriously as someone who's trying to make a career out of it. Now, I don't want to pick out any specific chains, but they're all in the same boat. They all have very young people running their businesses and they take what they can get. And they also buy the cheapest product out there. They're in business to make money, and a fast-food hamburger costs the restaurant only about three cents. So what do you expect to get for three cents? I don't expect to find a lot of quality in a quarter-pound of beef for three cents. You get what you pay for. If I needed my appendix out, and I got three different bids from three different doctors, I'm not so sure I would take the cheapest one. When I purchase product, I don't take the cheapest price. I buy quality and quality only. If the price has to be eight dollars a pound, then I'm sorry, it's gotta be eight dollars a pound. So that's a big thing to watch out for. Let me put it this way — I don't eat in restaurants because of the way food is handled. I haven't eaten fast food for fifteen years. And there are some very nice restaurants right here in town that I choose not to eat at, only because I've seen their kitchens and I've taken meat to many of these restaurants and had the privilege of going into their cooler to put the meat down. And I'm not stupid, I take a little look to see what's going on around me, and some of the things you see are pretty appalling. But it's not the meat! (chuckles)
You mean it's not the meat that's the problem, but what people do with their meat?
Exactly. That's the biggest concern. I grew up in the grocery and meat business my whole life, started out spreading sawdust on cooler floors in meat operations when I was eight years old, so I've seen a lot of changes. I'm forty-three years old, so I've seen a lot of changes in the business. But let me tell you, the problem isn't the meat. If you had a cancer-infected black Angus steer, that piece of meat is going to eat real tough and it's going to have a bitter taste. But even if you ate the tumor itself, it's not going to make you sick.
No?
No! It's going to pass through your system like anything else, and you're going to get up from the table and say, "Geez, that was a lousy-tasting piece of meat, and it was really tough and chewy." But on the other hand, if that piece of meat is spoiled, it's rancid, and you eat it, then you're going to get sick. So those are the things I'm concerned about, and those are the things I think you as a consumer should be very concerned about. If you go into a meat market and there's an odor, or if you approach certain meat operations in grocery stores and you can smell a distinct odor, if that odor isn't bleach I wouldn't buy anything there. Because bleach is something that is used an awful lot in good meat operations to clean all the equipment that the meat is processed on, and that is far more important than anything else. If you never smell a little hint of bleach, and you smell other odors, that meat department is not clean. That would concern me. But the product coming in the back door of that department is perfectly fine.
So you've been in slaughterhouses?
Oh, gosh, yes.
Are they all that bad?
Slaughterhouses are not the neatest places in the whole world to spend a lot of time, but you've got to remember that they have a real lousy job to do. I mean, killing and processing animals is not really that much fun.
Do they actually kill the animals there?
Oh, the animals are killed at the slaughterhouse, yes. But like I said, with normal procedures, and the rinsing and the washing of the carcasses after they're processed, those are all things that make it very, very ... It's pretty hard to contaminate a piece of meat.
Really?
I'll be honest with you. It's not like doing brain surgery, okay? You have to really go out of your way to cause a piece of meat to spoil.
I've heard stories about certain organs being taken out of animals and intestinal waste spilling onto the meat —
It's not so much the intestinal waste as it is the urine bag. If you break the urine bag during slaughter, and it drips down on the meat, the meat that it dripped on should be disposed of. It's not something you can wash off and fix, because the urine penetrates the muscle tissue and stays right in the meat. But again, if you ate that, you're not going to get sick. I don't care what kind of a digestive sensitivity you have, you're not going to get sick. But you're not going to be happy, either. You're not going to say, "I just had the best steak I ever had." You're going to say, "That steak tasted like liver." You know if you've had liver that it has a very distinct smell and a very distinct taste. Now if you ever eat a piece of beef, the piece of beef that would be most susceptible to this would be the beef tenderloin. Because the beef tenderloin rests right next to the liver. And it also rests right next to the urine bag itself. And if that bag is broken during the slaughter process, the tenderloin, because the animal is hanging upside down, the tenderloin is going to be the piece of meat that gets totally saturated with urine. When that happens, it's going to taste like liver. So if you've ever been in a restaurant and ordered a beef tenderloin that has a slight hint of a liver taste or smell, it's been tainted. And again, it won't make you sick, but it's going to be more like eating a piece of liver than a tenderloin. But I think your concerns are wonderful. If I were you I would never stop eating meat because everything in moderation will be tolerable. If you're worried about getting sick from e. coli or salmonella, what you have to do is just take some normal precautions. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it is common sense. Now if you want to be concerned about something, be concerned about the poultry industry. There's a lot less regulation in the poultry industry than the beef industry. Countries from all over the world come to us for our cattle. For instance, I don't even allow ketchup in my house. Because I want my kids to appreciate the true taste of beef. If they want to have french fries with ketchup that's fine, but not on good beef.
You sound like a true meat lover, sir.
That's right. No ketchup on my meat. Learn to appreciate it the way it's supposed to be.
It does have that flavor that I love and I would love to remain true to it.
You know what you gotta do is be concerned with how stuff is handled. Take a look at where you eat, that would be the best advice I could give you. I could go on for about a day, telling you about different situations and different things, but all in all, believe me, the meat in this country, it's not the fault of the meat. And if you ever want a first-class ground sirloin that you can take home and make burgers out of, you come on down and see me, and I'll be more than glad to give you the best that you can buy.
THE BEEF COUNCIL
Hi, this is Mike, and I'm calling from Los Angeles. I'm in a tough situation here. Now, I eat meat — I love hamburgers, I love ribs, I love pork knuckles — but I've been wondering about all the stuff the vegetarian people have been telling me lately. They've been talking about the health risks, and I'm wondering if you can help me out in remaining a meat-eater. I called a butcher just now because I'm really troubled by this problem.
Female Beef Councillor: Who did you call?
I talked to Larry at Larry's Butcher Shop. He was an awfully nice guy, and he recommended that I call you.
Well, there's a couple of things. Just addressing your concerns, what have you been hearing? Are you interested in nutrition?
Well, I'm concerned about the health risks. I've read how federal regulations are relaxed now so that more cows are going through the slaughtering process quicker than ever. Then gross stuff gets in the meat, which makes children die after eating hamburgers at a Jack In The Box restaurant.
Yes, but to address some of your questions on health and nutrition in eating beef, I can show you a lot of documentation from dieticians, from the USDA, showing that beef has about six grams of fat in a three-ounce cooked portion, and that easily fits into the American Heart Association guidelines for eating meat. I don't know you, but I can give you a ballpark figure — you should eat about forty grams of fat a day, and think of that when you're adding up your fat grams. But blanket regulations on nutrition don't apply to everyone. For example, I have very low cholesterol, so I don't need to worry about cholesterol.
I'm in the same boat, actually. I'm pretty thin, so I don't have to worry about cholesterol? That really eases the mind.
Everything in moderation. Even a cream puff at the state fair, I always say, if you have one a year, you're fine. Eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy products, grains, everything in the pyramid.
But do you think it would be a bad idea to stop eating meat?
It all depends on your personal choice. I don't have any problem with that. I don't want people telling me what to eat. I can just give you the facts, and you have to make that decision.
Right. It's up to me, I guess. (sighs) I've been thinking about reading The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. Do you think that would be a good idea?
I haven't read that book. I've heard about it, but I have not read it. I have a lot of other books I've read recently I could recommend to you. I just read The Celestine Prophecy, and I just read all of John Grisham's books.
Is there much about meat in those?
No. I mean, there's meat in the content of the books, they're good books, but no beef, pork, lamb or veal. (laughs)
O-kay. Well, this issue can tug at the heartstrings, you know? Once I was driving in Wyoming real late at night on a road trip, and I stopped for some gas, and there was a trailer full of cows next to me. And they were transporting them to the slaughterhouse at night so no one could hear them all screaming. Do you think those screaming cows somehow had an innate foreknowledge of their own death?
I have never heard a cow scream, and I worked on a farm for years. They are a food product, and Americans love the taste of them, so as long as Americans love the taste of beef, producers will continue to produce it.
How do you feel about tofu?
I like tofu. I have a recipe for tofu cheesecake that's really good.
Do you ever wonder about the costs of beef? The American public demands it, but isn't the rain forest being cut down to make grazing land for McDonald's?
No, actually, McDonald's buys all their beef in the United States.
Are the other big chains like that?
Not all of them. I think Wendy's has a sign up that says they buy all their beef in the U.S., but as far as the rain forest goes, people love to blame that on beef, but it's really a human and political issue. It's humans that are cutting down the rain forest, not the cattle. And a lot of times, what's happening is that they're clearing that beautiful, wonderful rain forest unfortunately and producing crops that are very poor-yielding. That land is not meant for producing crops or grazing cattle. I or you alone are unable to stop what other countries are doing, and the fact that they do not consider beautiful rain forest valuable is an issue that's bigger than you or I.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Tough Call by Mike Loew. Copyright © 2000 Mike Loew. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Shout-Outs,
Introduction,
The Meat Market,
Speed Dial: Aerial Advertising Firm,
Slave for a Day,
Speed Dial: Internet Service Provider,
Holistic Healers,
Speed Dial: Sony,
Our Weight Problem,
Speed Dial: Telemarketer,
Vacation Time,
Speed Dial: Tobacconist's,
Ready to Rock,
Speed Dial: Concrete Company,
I Am Outraged,
Speed Dial: Funeral Home,
Spiritual Dialogue,
Speed Dial: Video Game Company,
Filling the Ranks,
Speed Dial: Hospital,
It's a Crime,
Speed Dial: Hair Restoration Clinic,
Heart to Heart,
Speed Dial: Serb Fest,
The Drug War,
Speed Dial: Abortion Alternatives,
My First Militia,
Copyright,