Free Republic

When you order a steak at a restaurant or steakhouse, you expect the meat to have been cut directly from the source and not modified in any way. In a bid to cut costs, though, some restaurant and hotel chains use "meat glue" to bond pieces of meat together to create real-looking whole steaks, specifically filet mignon, the most tender cut of steak. Fortunately, there are several ways to tell when a restaurant does this. First, let's explain how restaurants form or pre-form filet mignon. They start by covering leftover chunks of meat with transglutaminase, an enzyme that the body...

The American Meat Institute is striking back at reports that “meat glue,” a binding agent often used to patch together pieces of beef and other protein, is unsafe and unnatural. In an occasionally touchy conference call Thursday, the trade group said that the USDA considers such substances to be safe and requires its presence to be noted on retail labels. The product, however, isn’t always disclosed when it’s served at restaurants and other food service outlets, experts said. But using the binding substance to weave together high-quality cuts such as filet mignon with lower-priced meat such as chuck steak is...