BECAUSE STORIES, THOSE VERY BEAUTIFUL ONES, MUST BE TOLD... AND EATEN.
You & Meat does not want to be a brand that deals “only” with burgers and gourmet cuts: it is a brand that every day thinks about who will eat its burgers and cuts of meat.
You & Meat thinks of you.
This is why we would like to tell you what is in our products and how to read the label. Being informed is very important, we can learn more about what we bring to our table.
FIRST OF ALL
We select the raw material to give you an exquisite gourmet burger. We carry out 3000 analyses a year as an average in our internal and external laboratories to ensure that your burger is always at the top!
THE RECIPE
Let’s keep it short: more than 85% meat and a few other ingredients. We believe that meat must be the protagonist. That is why our aim is to enhance its texture and taste without too many other additions. We don’t use boning trimmings but real anatomical cuts.
WITHOUT IS BETTER
Our products are gluten-free to give the opportunity to eat an exquisite burger even to those people with special dietary needs, without ifs and buts.
BREEDS AND NOT ONLY
Not the usual “beef” but organic, Aberdeen Angus Sired, Tuscan Chianina, Piemontese and selected Heifer’s meat: about 17 references between cuts and burgers. An important variety so that you can taste many different flavours and cuts, and discover your favourite ones.
Not only burgers or only ready-to-cook cuts, but a real brand commitment. Like a Manifesto; a responsibility towards sustainability that we have declined in 3 key words.
#Environment
The optimization of time and resources has an important impact on the environment. This means less waste, more awareness about the use of raw materials such as energy and water, and reduction of plastic and paper.
Just to give you some information on the pack* you are holding in your hand:
in January, we relaunched it: it is smaller, if compared to the previous one, by 25% (reduction on both plastic and paper) 75% of the plastic used for the tray is recycled. We reduced the pack, but not the burger, of course, neither in terms of size nor in terms of quality.
And that’s just one of the things we’ve come up with. And we’re just getting started…
*(information refers to burger packaging)
#People
Our commitment has always started from here: we want to give the consumer who buys You & Meat products an excellent product, made with lots of meat and very few other ingredients. Moreover, the fact that our products are gluten-free reflects our desire to give the opportunity to freely eat a tasty product even to those people with special dietary needs without any compromise. We don’t want to say it lightly, but we truly want to do our best for our consumers.
The choice of raw materials has been subject to increasingly rigorous controls over the years: we select slaughterhouses, animal breeds and categories on the basis of high-quality standards. We have launched La nostra Filiera (Our Supply Chain), a partnership project in which the relationship between breeder, slaughterhouse and producer is fundamental. Synergy and collaboration are the key words to give life to the supply chain and make it virtuous.
Last but not least, culture: through our academy MEatSCHOOL as well as through the news and contents we post on the different channels, we aim to give our consumers some useful notions that may increase their awareness about food. We consider very important to know what we are eating but also how it should be eaten, especially in this particular age of information-overdose.
#Company
Our company is committed every day to:
promoting supply chain projects;
adhering to voluntary certifications that enhance our products and processes;
investing in work teams and in R&D to be more efficient and effective on the production processes leading to the improvement and to an increasingly optimal management of resources and energy in order to avoid waste;
positively recognizing the work of employees who are committed to growing the company every day.
The label. Find out more about You&Meat products
Breed or category?
By ‘breed’ we mean “Group of individuals of a species characterized by common external and hereditary characters” therefore we can say that the Tuscan Chianina as well as the Aberdeen are a breed Angus. We can define ‘category’ instead, as the classification of the cattle based on sex and age. We talk of category when we refer to the bovine in terms of: calf, young steer, bull or heifer and cow in the case of female animals. Each of these terms indicates the sex and/or the age-stage of the animal. So, if you order a heifer’s rib steak at the restaurant, we are not talking about a breed!
Packaging
“Packaged in skin pack”: what does it mean? Thanks to this technology the product is deprived of air. You can almost feel the product thanks to this “skin effect”. By removing the oxygen, the colour of the product can change over the course of a few days, but as soon as the package is opened the product “re-oxygenates”: so, if the colour darkens a little it does not mean the meat is not good, perhaps, it just needs a “breath of air”.
*(Inside an intact packaging and stored correctly)
Brand “Spiga Barrata” (the crossed-out sign with wheat ear or wheat spike, i.e., the gluten-free icon). What is it for and how to recognize it.
Does celiac disease tell you something? It is “a chronic inflammation of the small intestine, triggered by the ingestion of gluten in genetically predisposed subjects”. You can easily live with celiac disease if you follow a diet based on gluten-free products. And it is precisely for this reason that our company aims at gluten-free products. In our case, it is applied to meat preparations. The meat itself is naturally gluten-free. You recognize a “Spiga Barrata” gluten-free product (or a licensee product) by the mark issued by AIC, THE ITALIAN CELIAC ASSOCIATION which certifies the suitability of that product to be consumed by celiacs. For more info on celiac disease: click here
Ingredients
They tell you what is inside the products; what products are made of.
If the voice “ingredients” is not present then you have purchased a cut of meat that by definition is only pure meat, therefore “adult beef’s fresh meat”.
Instructions for the storage
We tell you how to store the product: remember that burgers, such as cuts and the so-called “fresh” (fridge products) must respect the cold chain and must be stored at the indicated temperature. A lack of this type generates many inconveniences: the product perishes and unhealthy bacteria are likely to develop, so pay attention to the storage instructions!
Expiration date and lot code
All kinds of food have a shelf-life which can be more or less long. It is important to know the conservation mode to preserve the integrity of the product (see indications on the package).
The expiration date is extremely important. It specifies the suitable period when eating the product (exceeding that date would mean eating a product whose integrity and healthiness is no longer guaranteed). Do you know the difference between “to be consumed by” and “to be consumed preferably by”? The first, “to be consumed by”, is a peremptory deadline within which to consume the product. Whereas should “preferably” be indicated it means that it is recommended to eat the product by that date, or, at most, within a few days. In any case, it is always better not to exceed the terms indicated or recommended.
The lot code works as a kind of “identity card of the product”, through which you can track back all its history. 1. It is an important information to keep and communicate to the manufacturer in case anomalies are found on the product.
Nutritional values
They are those values which indicate the chemical composition of a product, the caloric and nutritional content, and consist of: calories, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, to name a few. Knowing the nutritional values is important because they tell us what the product is made of, which is a piece of useful information for a healthy and balanced diet.
Health mark
It identifies the processing facility that produced and packaged the product and that is therefore responsible for its hygiene status. The facilities where products of animal origin are processed and for which specific hygiene requirements in addition to the general ones provided for by EC Reg. 852/04 are envisaged, are subject to approval and can therefore operate only if they obtain a national approval number. The health mark that you find on the packaging contains this recognition and, by regulation, it consists of 3 elements: the name of the country in which the product was processed or better its country code (eg: IT), the national approval number of the facility where the food was processed, and the letters EC for European Community.