The days of buying meat from a butcher are kinda long gone, folks. That's not to say that butchers are out of fashion or have disappeared (we definitely love getting that extra bit of expertise and quality when we get our meat) but nowadays, you're far more likely to buy your meat at the grocery store. In 2022, people across the U.
S. spent $86.6 billion on grocery store meat, according to Statista , marking an increase of over $20 billion in just five years.
One of the main reasons people go to grocery store meat departments is for their reliability — and yet, these departments can be surprisingly risky, and full of warning signs that should put you on guard about the quality of their produce. These red flags can be pretty tricky to spot, too. Red flags in grocery store meat departments aren't always related to the meat itself, and can be related to the hygiene standards of the surroundings.
There are also certain sensory clues that you can pick up on in these departments that give things away. That's all before you get to the meat itself. How it looks and the kind of info that's on the packaging can be big giveaways of its quality.
There are pools of liquid in the packaging There's nothing worse than dry, fibrous meat — but if the packaged meat in your grocery store looks a little too wet, that's definitely not a good thing either. There's one big telltale sign that grocery store meat isn't being stored properly , and that's that it has pools of liquid at the bottom .