A few weeks ago, a blogger posted a photo claiming to uncover what chicken nuggets really look like. It’s made the rounds and if you haven’t seen it it’s pretty gross. Since that time various sites have been going bizerk over it but is the photo really processed chicken before it’s made into nuggets?
The site (referring to the the pink image shown above) states…
Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s what all fast-food chicken is made from—things like chicken nuggets and patties. Also, the processed frozen chicken in the stores is made from it.
It turned my stomach and still does looking at it. Is this really what I’ve been eating all these years? Who hasn’t had a chicken nugget? They are practically a requirement at most school lunch programs.
Last week, I joined my 6-year old niece for her school lunch. We had a choice between beef stroganoff or “fish shapes”. I ventured for the beef stroganoff but the majority of kids in the first grade class went for the fish shapes. After witnessing the kids decisions, I’m convinced that Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is onto something. He showed kids how chicken nuggets are made and despite seeing what they are made of kids still wanted them.
Back to the photo of the pink goop. Is it really chicken or something else? No one has confirmed for certain however, GOOD.com recently wrote about the topic. They did a great job of breaking down the photo & how nuggets are made. It’s much like the example shown above in the Jamie Oliver video. It’s definitely worth reading but be warned you may never eat another nugget again.
1. “It’s what you get when you grind an entire chicken through a sieve”
Close, but not quite. When a machine processes a whole chicken, there is quite a bit of meat left on the bones. To avoid wasting that meat—and money—the bones are run through a sieve-like device, but only to remove meat and other edible tissue (like tendon) from them. So, yes, there is a sieve, but the end result consists only of meat, not ground up bones or eyeballs.
So… Who wants a nugget?
Photo Credits: flickr.com & countmyribs.tumblr.com.
