Study reveals that 40 percent of chicken meat offered by fast food chains in the United States is made up of seaweed, beef, soy, oats and wood scraps
Magdy Zara
Have you ever wondered how much chicken you really eat? Fried chicken is one of the most popular foods in the United States. However, a study published by the prestigious The Daily Mail reports that 14 of the most popular fast food chains offer chicken-based menus with only 60 percent real meat, the rest is augmented with seaweed, flour, meat beef, soybeans, oats and even wood.
The 14 fast food chains exposed in the study are McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr., Jack in the Box, Whataburger, Burger King, Domino’s, Dairy Queen, Arby’s, Culver’s, White Castle, Del Taco and Subway.
For example, McDonald’s McNuggets contain white boneless chicken, but also include flours, starch, vegetable oils, flavorings and spices, lemon juice solids, dextrose, and yeast extract, plus a significant amount of salt.
In the case of Wendy’s, the burger of its popular chicken sandwich is made up of only 56 percent chicken breast meat, while the rest is a mixture of water, wheat flour, starch, acids, spices and powders. flavor. It also contains refined soybean oil, raising agent, and other less common ingredients like dried chicken powder and smoke flavoring.
Burger King, for its part, incorporates additional flavors into its chicken nuggets by using chicken breast and rib meat, along with autolyzed yeast extract and other flavor enhancers such as disodium guanylate.
Domino Pizza is popularly known for its pizzas, they also offer chicken or nugget steaks, which also contain additional ingredients in their offerings. Your grilled chicken contains quite a bit of modified food starch, including modified cornstarch, and lipolyzed butteroil.
Del Taco, in relation to the Mexican food chain, add that “it does not have 100 percent chicken on its menu either and that the ingredients for its crispy chicken include boneless chicken breast with rib meat, water, salt, and sodium phosphates.”
Their grilled chicken taco has an even longer list: It contains up to 30 percent water solution, dehydrated whey protein concentrate, dehydrolyzed soy protein, corn syrup solids, corn gluten, gelatin and maltodextrin, as well as seasonings.
Carl’s Jr. “Their Nuggets, recognized for their unique star shape, also include some unusual ingredients such as: beef fat, which has three different types of protein (hydrolyzed soy protein, wheat and corn) the spicy chicken sandwich, contains oat product isolate in its burger and within the bread microcrystalline cellulose, which is a type of refined wood pulp.”
The shape of White CastleLa’s chicken offering may be a clue that it’s not 100 percent meat. These rings contain an extensive list of ingredients including the preservative carrageenan, which is derived from seaweed, and cooked chicken powder.
One of the findings of this study is the fact that a simple chicken burger, a piece of fried chicken or a chicken nugget contain between 15 and 120 synthetic ingredients. Among which stand out products such as preservatives, dyes or emulsifiers, chemical products with a proven carcinogenic effect, also oils, salts and sugars.
According to Professor Antonio Suárez of the Department of Biomaterials at North Carolina State University, “The excessive intake of sugar that occurs, without realizing it, when we consume one of these products, not only produces weight gain that can lead to obesity, but is also likely to cause diabetes. In fact, the number of diabetic children in the US (a country where nutritional gaps are a national emblem) is increasing. And not only in the United States but in many other countries that are beginning to be influenced by their customs.
In recent years, cardiovascular diseases have become one of the most important causes of death and, in part, it is due to the products we consume. The use of palm and coconut oil, an oil with a very high capacity to produce atheromas that cause arteriosclerosis, is widely distributed, explains Dr. Suárez.
Other studies
In February 2017, journalists from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Marketplace program chose to test the DNA of six pieces of chicken purchased from five different fast food outlets. The goal was to determine if the beige meat substance used in their dishes was genuinely chicken.
Although the CBC made it clear that it did not expect any of the samples to result in “100 percent chicken” due to seasoning and preparation processes that could affect sample content, most of them came close. considerably. For example, chicken patties and parts from A&W, McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and Wendy’s were found to contain between 88.5 and 89.4 percent chicken DNA.
However, after completing a series of tests, the lab team proceeded to analyze the results obtained from Subway. The result surprised the specialists and decided to carry out other tests. They ran a second round of DNA testing and realized it wasn’t a lab error: Subway’s oven-roasted chicken contained only 53.6 percent chicken DNA, while its chicken strips contained only 53.6 percent. 42.8 percent. As reported by the station, the rest of the composition was soy protein.
The pharmaceutical industry and the food industry are the ones that generate the most money in the world. For this reason, in recent years there is a race to reduce production costs and increase profits. However, these actions drastically affect the health of the population.
According to an article published by The Spruce Eats, “there is an explosion in plant-based alternative meat options at fast food chains across the country. This is largely because producers like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have created incredibly similar plant-based proteins that look, smell and taste similar to the real thing.”
Last year KFC and Beyond Meat carried out a pilot test in the fast food restaurants of this franchise, where they offered their customers the new boneless nuggets and wings based on natural products, such as plants and seeds. It was called Beyond Fried Chicken; that is, chicken that they claim tastes like chicken, looks like chicken, but is not chicken. However, it was withdrawn because it did not meet quality standards.
This trend will continue, currently in laboratories in Israel are 3D printing meat. For this reason, they recommend learning to recognize what foods you bring to your table and how they influence your health.
