Break free and declare your independence from monopolist propaganda.
"Are the Chicken McNuggets really 100% chicken?"
[mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/see_what_we_are_made_of/your_questions_answered/meats.html]:
The only meat used in McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets is chicken breast meat. The white meat is minced before being shaped into nuggets, and then coated with a specially seasoned batter at our trusted suppliers, such as Keystone Foods. To find out more about Keystone Foods, read their story here [mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/see_what_we_are_made_of/meet_our_suppliers/keystone_foods.html].
"Just what is in that chicken nugget?"
2013-10-04 by Kathryn Doyle from "Reuters" [news.yahoo.com/just-chicken-nugget-131533269.html]: NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Stand-up comedians have long joked that some things, like the actual components of chicken nuggets, are better left mysterious.
Recently, Mississippi researchers found out why: two nuggets they examined consisted of 50 percent or less chicken muscle tissue, the breast or thigh meat that comes to mind when a customer thinks of "chicken."
The nuggets came from two national fast food chains in Jackson. The three researchers selected one nugget from each box, preserved, dissected and stained the nuggets, then looked at them under a microscope.
The first nugget was about half muscle, with the rest a mix of fat, blood vessels and nerves. Close inspection revealed cells that line the skin and internal organs of the bird, the authors write in the American Journal of Medicine.
The second nugget was only 40 percent muscle, and the remainder was fat, cartilage and pieces of bone.
"We all know white chicken meat to be one of the best sources of lean protein available and encourage our patients to eat it," lead author Dr. Richard D. deShazo of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, said.
"What has happened is that some companies have chosen to use an artificial mixture of chicken parts rather than low-fat chicken white meat, batter it up and fry it and still call it chicken," deShazo told Reuters Health.
"It is really a chicken by-product high in calories, salt, sugar and fat that is a very unhealthy choice. Even worse, it tastes great and kids love it and it is marketed to them."
The nuggets he examined would be okay to eat occasionally, but he worries that since they are cheap, convenient and taste good, kids eat them often. His own grandchildren "beg" for chicken nuggets all the time, and he compromises by making them at home by pan-frying chicken breasts with a small amount of oil, deShazo said.
"Chicken nuggets are an excellent source of protein, especially for kids who might be picky eaters," said Ashley Peterson, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the National Chicken Council (NCC), a non-profit trade group representing the U.S. chicken industry.
According to the NCC, its member producers and processors account for about 95 percent of the chicken produced in the U.S.
"This study evaluates only two chicken nugget samples out of the billions of chicken nuggets that are made every year," Peterson said. A sample size of two nuggets is simply too small to generalize to an entire category of food, she told Reuters Health.
Two nuggets is a small sample size, deShazo acknowledged, and some chains have begun to use primarily white meat in their nuggets - just not the particular restaurants he visited.
"Chicken nuggets tend to have an elevated fat content because they are breaded and fried. But it's no secret what is in a chicken nugget - most quick service restaurants have nutritional information posted in the store or on their website," Peterson said.
"And every package of chicken nuggets in the grocery store by law contains an ingredient list and a complete nutritional profile, including fat content," she said.
The brief chicken nugget exploration was not meant to be an exposé of the chicken industry or fast food generally, but to remind consumers that "not everything that tastes good is good for you," deShazo said.
He and his colleagues chose not to reveal which chain restaurants they visited.
Consumers aren't necessarily being misled, since much of the nutritional information they need is readily available, he said.
"We just don't take the time to understand basic nutritional facts."
---
SOURCE: "The Autopsy of Chicken Nuggets Reads “Chicken Little”" by Richard D. deShazo MD, Steven Bigler MD, Leigh Baldwin Skipworth BA, published by "American Journal of Medicine", online 2013-09-13 [amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00396-3/abstract]:
Abstract:
Purpose - To determine the contents of chicken nuggets from 2 national food chains.
Background - Chicken nuggets have become a major component of the American diet. We sought to determine the current composition of this highly processed food.
Methods - Randomly selected nuggets from 2 different national fast food chains were fixed in formalin, sectioned and stained for microscopic analysis.
Results - Striated muscle (chicken meat) was not the predominate component in either nugget. Fat was present in equal or greater quantities along with epithelium, bone, nerve, and connective tissue.
Conclusion - Chicken nuggets are mostly fat, and their name is a misnomer.
"Pre-Chicken Nugget Meat Paste, AKA Mechanically Separated Poultry"
2010-10-04 from "Huffington Post" online newsjournal [huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/mechanically-separated-meat-chicken-mcnugget-photo_n_749893.html]:
Mechanically Separated Chicken, from Fooducate, via Early Onset of Night
The photo above [SEE UPDATE BELOW] has been extensively passed around recently, and for good reason: it's a peek into the rarely-seen world of mechanically separated meat.
Fooducate writes [blog.fooducate.com//2009/08/03/guess-whats-in-the-picture-foodlike-substance]: [begin excerpt] Someone figured out in the 1960s that meat processors can eek out a few more percent of profit from chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows by scraping the bones 100% clean of meat. This is done by machines, not humans, by passing bones leftover after the initial cutting through a high pressure sieve. The paste you see in the picture above is the result. [end excerpt]
Michael Kindt continues [early-onset-of-night.tumblr.com/post/1206666159/say-hello-to-mechanically-separated-chicken-its]: [begin excerpt] There's more: because it's crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia... Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color. But, hey, at least it tastes good, right? High five, America! [end excerpt]
UPDATE, 10/4/10: The story has been amended to reflect that although mass produced chicken nuggets at large may contain mechanically separated chicken, McDonald's famous McNuggets no longer do contain "mechanically separated poultry as defined by the federal government. The USDA now requires foods with mechanically separated poultry to be labeled as containing "mechanically separated chicken or turkey" in their ingredients lists.
Additionally, although "mechanically separated meat" may apply to turkey, chicken and pork, due to concerns over BSE, the federal government has held since 2004 that mechanically separated beef "is considered inedible and is prohibited for use as human food."
UPDATE II, 10/5/10: Because the original source of the photo cannot be fully verified, we have removed it from this post. While no one has been able to prove definitely whether the image shows mechanically separated poultry or pork, we do know that those products look quite similar to the substance in the photo. For example, on the Food Revolution show, Jamie Oliver demonstrated a version of the process ("how to use all the leftover bits to make food"), by hand, to kids, in a failed attempt to scare them away from the mass-produced foods that such meat slurries end up in (failed, because the children still wanted to eat the resulting chicken nuggets despite his demonstration). The chicken slurry he made before their eyes bears an uncanny resemblance to the passed-around photo. from "Jamie Oliver - Nugget experiment epic failure" 2010-04-12 upload to "Youtube.com" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9B7im8aQjo]: From the show Jamie Oliver Food Revolution. Jamie Oliver attempts and fails miserably in trying to convince a group of American kids that consuming processed chicken nuggets are bad.:
Here is a picture of mechanically separated pork and beef scraps in a hot dog plant, emerging after emulsification, from a National Geographic video, from "Meat Smoothie" 2008-09-30 upload to "Youtube.com" by "National Geographic" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBBSY5Z5YVk]: Follow two tons of meat into the chopping room where it becomes a "meat smoothie," which ultimately becomes a hot dog.:
And here's another shot of the resulting product from mechanical meat separation, from this video, which advertises a company's suite of machines that perform these functions:
More info about mechanically separated meats [snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp]
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