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This Amazing Photo Series Takes the ‘Mystery’ out of Mystery Meat
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This Amazing Photo Series Takes the ‘Mystery’ out of Mystery Meat
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This Amazing Photo Series Takes the ‘Mystery’ out of Mystery Meat

Pork snout, anyone?

August 09, 2014 Kristina Bravo
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Nuggets

Nuggets

(Photo: Peter Augustus)

BLT

BLT

(Photo: Peter Augustus)
Hot Dog

Hot Dog

(Photo: Peter Augustus)
Pork Burger

Pork Burger

(Photo: Peter Augustus)
This Amazing Photo Series Takes the ‘Mystery’ out of Mystery Meat
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A Simple Guide to Regrowing 5 Everyday Veggie Scraps
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A Simple Guide to Regrowing 5 Everyday Veggie Scraps

Americans generate food waste like nobody’s business. The USDA estimates that in 2010, we didn’t eat nearly a third of the 430 billion pounds of food produced in the United States. That’s 1,249 calories—a fifth of which came from produce—in the trash per person.

Luckily, many are taking action. Next month Massachusetts will start enforcing a rule to ban large-scale food wasters—about 1,700 hospitals, hotels, supermarkets, and other institutions—from sending their food scraps to landfills. They’ll have to donate or repurpose usable food instead. The rest will be shipped to composting plants, animal-feed manufacturers, or facilities that convert organic waste to green energy.

Want to be part of the solution? There are a few obvious ways to cut down on food waste: Buy only what you’ll eat, give less-than-perfect fruits and veggies a chance, and get creative with leftovers. Or, you can save a few trips to the grocery store by following our step-by-step guide to regrowing five kitchen ingredients. Some are as easy as putting stumps in a jar of water; others will get your hands a little dirty and will take some patience—but they’re all worth a try. Just remember that if all else fails, there’s always the compost bin. 

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Nobody likes to see how the sausage—or really, any kind of processed meat product—gets made. Recently a Chinese factory that supplies McDonald’s and other chains made headlines when a video revealing workers’ unhygienic handling of meat surfaced. It posed an important question that most people would rather not dwell on: What are we really eating?

That inspired Hong Kong–based artist Peter Augustus’ Mystery Meat, a series of photographs that replaces familiar cuts of meat in classic American foods with the animal parts they come from.

“It is not meant to be repulsive,” Augustus said in an email. Instead, he intended to highlight the disconnect Western societies have with the food they eat and to spur the debate around the fillers and hormones used in meat.

Originally from Dallas, the artist became fascinated with Hong Kong’s meat shops, where pig heads, intestines, and eyeballs openly hang on hooks.

“As a foreigner from a major city in the West, most of us seldom see anything that even closely represents what kind of animals we are eating when we purchase it,” Augustus said. “It is always prepackaged, nice and neat, showcased in an air-conditioned supermarket.”

After finding a friendly butcher to help him with the project (“She thought it was funny”), Augustus shot the photographs using lighting and background that bring to mind the typical American diner or cafeteria.

“I hope the viewer takes into account what the natural form of their food looks like,” he said.

Click through for the Mystery Meat series, and see more of Augustus’ work here.

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TakePart is the digital news and lifestyle magazine from Participant Media, the company behind such acclaimed documentaries as CITIZENFOUR, An Inconvenient Truth, and Food, Inc. and feature films including  Lincoln and Spotlight.

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