Meat Cosmetics: Why Is Grocery Store Beef Always Red? (2024)

Grocery stores like to run at low-waste, especially for perishable products like meat. To cut down on possible waste, retailers focus on common-sense tactics like monitoring the temperatures of the display cases multiple times a day. If the store has in-house butchers, they will aim to stay just ahead of demand, only cutting and grinding meat according to what is needed.

When meat starts to move past its prime, a store’s response depends on both company policies and state and local regulations. Stores generally decide their own “best buy” or expiration dates (very few states require a grocery store to do date labeling for meat and poultry, and the only nationally-regulated product that is required by the FDA to list a “use-by” date is baby formula).

Obviously, stores have a vested interest in never selling expired products that pose a danger to consumers, so decisions are made according to internal quality control standards. A grocery store may discount the meat, which may or may not involve changing the “expiration” date. Stores may also choose to turn a roast into ground beef, add the meat to a sauce or marinade to lengthen its shelf-life (think those marinaded chicken skewers you’ll see in the deli), or prepare to donate it to a local food bank.

The cycling of fresh, processed, frozen, discount, and donated food is standard in the produce, deli, and meat departments. An industry built on perishable products need to recycle, reuse, and repurpose what is possible to minimize food waste.

But, in reality, these options are all last resorts in the modern grocery store. The true focus of the modern meat department is to never get to the point where you need to make these choices.

Because if you can keep up the cosmetic appearance of meat, you just might buy yourself enough of a “freshness” window in the consumers’ eyes that you’ll never need to worry about your product going to waste.

When a piece of meat is exposed to air, oxidation naturally turns the meat from purple to red, and over time, to brown and finally grey (read the scientific explanation about myoglobin here). And yet, when you walk into a supermarket, you’ll be greeted with display cases…