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: http://bit.ly/16Inpg8 American Journal of Medicine, online September 13, 2013.
MTW-I always wondered, and thought so. Now I know. Nasty. I never much cared about food quality as an extremely drunk young man, hanging out with my friends; yet even so I bit into a few Mcnuggets, and I could swear that I was chewing on tendons or cartilage- I did not know, but I do now. That was in 1988. I stopped eating there then, a we began to eat Taco Bell or Denny's as our "drinking excessively" food. Turns out Taco Bell's beef was filled with the same Pink Slime that McDonald's burger "beef". What happened to this Country IMPROVING as former generations made happen? In general over the years I mean. It does not make sense, and now we are the most obese Nation in the World. A lot of boredom in today's youth leads to anything from overeating to shooting and killing a nice young man from Australia. The government, with all of their aid and welfare, Obamacare adding to the lack of jobs causing many to never enter the workplace and learn a good work ethic, move up in the World financially and have a decent life tells me that we are in serious trouble when OUR Representatives in DC do not care for the very ones of us who need their attention. Instead there is one side trying to negotiate- for US, and a President and Senator Reid behaving as if they are the all knowing Gurus. God forbid you openly attack an Obama policy, that makes you a "racist", or a "Tea Party terrorist", rather than what we are- informed American Citizens. Our Rights are being used by the Obama crew to hurt us and cause Conservatives' constituency to force the Republicans to give in. He will fight his fellow Americans, without negotiation, yet he goes out of his way to meet Iran's president- who will most likely lie in their faces to get sanctions lowered, all the while working in Iran to buy time to get that ICBM not to reach Israel, US. He will negotiate with Putin and Assad. But not Congress. This is all a great distraction from the Obamacare sign-up fiasco. Most of the things- like the debt ceiling- are the very things on which he opposed GW Bush, and openly mocked him about. The same goes for many other things, none more terrible than the deficit. Bush added $4.9 trillion in the 8 years he led the Country. Obama called that Unpatriotic and Un-American, as he proceeded to add over $6 trillion in less than 5 years, blaming Bush for problems to this day. What does that make him? He campaigned on cutting the deficit in half in his first term or he, and I quote, "will not run for re-election". It makes him a liar and a hypocrite. He should be quite the golfer by now. If only he did not run the second time. The Government would not be shut down, the deficit might be lower than $17 trillion and Obamacare would not be the nightmare it looks to be. I think we need to put the blame squarely where it belongs: OBAMA. For EVERYTHING. That is what he did to Bush. Pray folks.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
Posted by Michael T. Wayne- A Little Crazy
No comments:
Post a Comment