When a Walmart customer opens the package of ground beef she recently purchased, she is shocked by the quality. In a video with nearly 5 million views, content creator Chelsey Marie Fitzgerald (@thefriendlykitchen) shows viewers the meat and expresses her doubts about the product.
“I ordered my groceries from Walmart and this is the hamburger they gave us,” Fitzgerald says in the video as she opens the package and mashes the gray-pink meat in her hands.
“Remember when hamburgers literally had red lines? They felt like moon sand. What are they doing?” she continues.
“None of this is normal… for the first time I’m worried about the meat I buy at the store. I think it’s time to go to the butcher.”
Fitzgerald describes the meat as “gel-like” and calls it “pasty.” As she fries the ground meat in a pan, she notices how much fat is produced.
“There’s so much fat in it… the fat settles all the way up to the lines in my spatula… Yes, it’s not 80/20, in my opinion it’s 50/50,” she says, referring to the meat’s advertised proportion of 80% lean meat and 20% fat.
After the meat is cooked, Fitzgerald strains it through a sieve and collects the excess fat in a bowl. “That’s a lot of fat,” she says one last time as the video ends.
The text overlay in the video reads, “This is NOT 80/20. Is this even real meat?” Followed by Fitzgerald’s caption, which reads, “I’m suspicious.”
Viewers comment on US beef
In the comments, users reacted to the quality of the meat and expressed their concerns about the quality of food in the USA.
“Never buy tube burgers… freshly ground at your local butcher,” read one comment.
“What do you all eat in the USA?” asked another viewer.
“Pink mud. Must go to a farmer friend,” a third person shared.
“I refuse to buy meat at Wal-Mart,” wrote a fourth user, and Fitzgerald responded, “I clearly made a huge mistake. Lesson learned.”
What’s the big deal about Walmart’s meat products?
This isn’t the first time Walmart’s meat products have come under scrutiny. The Daily Dot previously reported on a Walmart employee who went viral for sharply criticizing the company’s inflated ground beef prices, claiming that costs have doubled in recent years. The employee, named Elizabeth, shared a video of a 16-ounce package of ground beef that she said used to cost $3.94, showing that the same product now costs nearly $8.
However, when it comes to saving money on ground beef, one content creator has a solution. The Dot also recently reported on a creator who explained how to turn $3.98/lb. brisket from Sam’s Club into 12 packages of ground beef, and how to use the extra fat bits to make beef tallow using a meat grinder and vacuum sealer.
Although the inventor said he had achieved “a little more than the break-even point” with this method, the quality of the meat was “definitely better.”
The Daily Dot has contacted Fitzgerald by email and Walmart by email for more information.
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