Next time you're out for a bite, think about what you've been eating when you sink your teeth into that "mouth watering" burger - medium pink slime with a splash of ammonia please, and a side of fries. Yum! Some experts are saying that slime is no big deal and that the company just handled the press poorly. 

Did you know you were eating it in high school at your cafeteria? Or when you're dad grilled on the 4th of July?

What could BPI have done differently? Is  "lean, finely textured beef" more appetizing? How about educating consumers that the additive eliminates bacteria such as E. coli in the lean beef it is mixed with.

"BPI had a disclosure problem," Marler said. "From a public relations standpoint, they handled it incorrectly. Ultimately, when you're selling people food, you ought to be transparent about what you're selling them."

The factory, he said, shares a wall with one of Tyson Food's largest slaughter factories, which brings in meat trim via a conveyor belt. Hundreds of employees in hard hats, hair nets and white coats bustled around the odorless space, where Marler said he would see 60-pound boxes of lean meat that "looked a lot like hamburger — not the slimy stuff that looks like toothpaste."

Still, he refers to the cheap meat product as "gross stuff." It's also been referred to as "Soylent Pink" in a nod to the classic science fiction film "Soylent Green."

Though it's been in rotation for years and has been approved as safe by federal food regulators, the ingredient suddenly attracted a resurgence in interest this month via social media and online petitions.

"Companies need to trust the American public more to parse though what's real and what's not," he said.

Rochester-based Wegmans says it’s not removing supplies of ground beef from its 79 stores, but will transition as beef without the additive becomes available from the supplier. He says the timeline’s being determined.

Federal regulators say “pink slime” meets food safety standards. But recent media attention has led grocers like Kroger, Stop & Shop and Food Lion to drop it without a fight which makes one wonder why it was there in the first place, if in fact it was "needed" to prevent E. coli should we expect breakouts in the future? Was the filler merely that, a filler that the consumer was digesting, and paying for when they thought they were purchasing ground beef. Ground beef, not ground fatty meat trimmings and connective tissue.