Report: Chicken Nuggets Not Just "Meat" But Blood Vessels, Nerve Cells

Alan: In The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot observed that "humankind cannot bear very much reality." Blood vessels and nerve cells aside, few meat eaters fully confront the blunt fact that they are eating dead animal flesh. A great deal of human life "depends" on blinding oursselves to reality, coupled with a general dimming of consciousness. In 1926, French psychoanalysts Edourard Pichon and Rene Laforgue coined the term "scotomization" -- based on the Greek word "skotos" meaning " darkness -- to refer to humankind's penchant for "self-blinding" (which, revealingly, is the opposite of self-illumination). http://www.null66913.net/blog/2013/05/19/scotomization/

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Scientists took a close look at the chicken nugget and discovered what some may have suspected: it's not full of what we might think of as meat.

A study published online in September in the American Journal of Medicine -- cleverly titled "The Autopsy of Chicken Nuggets Reads 'Chicken Little'" - revealed that two nuggets from fast food chains in Jackson, Miss. contained only about half of what we would consider chicken meat.

"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 toReuters. "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."

For the research, nuggets were preserved, dissected and stained before they were examined under a microscope.

Nugget number one was about 50 percent muscle tissue such as from the breast or thigh, which is what most people think of when they think of chicken meat. The rest of it was made from fat, blood vessels and nerves, specifically the cells that line the skin and internal organs of the chicken.

Nugget number two was 40 percent muscle. The rest was fat, cartilage and bone.

DeShazo said the study shows chicken nuggets are actually chicken by-product consisting of mostly salt, sugar and fat -- two of which provide gratuitous calories. What's worse, he said, is that they are marketed to kids, especially because they are tasty and relatively cheap. He said if his grandchildren ask for nuggets, he compromises by pan frying some chicken breasts with a little bit of oil.

The researchers are remaining mum on which chains the chicken came from.

National Chicken Council (NCC), a non-profit trade group representing the U.S. chicken industry, told Reuters that chicken nuggets are a great source of protein and pointed out that the study only looked at two chicken nuggets. If consumers want to know how much of what component is in their nugget, most companies either post the nutritional information in the restaurant or on the packaging.

DeShazo admitted that the sample size was rather small and that some other companies have changed their formula to use only white meat in their nuggets.

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• Michelle Castillo
  
  
  
  
  

On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:

Alan,

My African wife could kill a chicken, clean it, cook it, and put it on the table in about 3-hours flat.

So I don't see the problem. When you eat a chicken, that means the chicken is what you are eating.

One of her good qualities is that she savored those parts of the chicken that I avoided -- the feet and the neck.

Together, we ate it all.

Having said that, we could do with less of the factory variety, and have more of backyard "real" chickens in the pot.

And I have always considered the poultry flock to be almost saintly -- in that they give their lives for us. I am deeply grateful.

Fred

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Dear Fred,

Thanks for your email.

I eat meat - although my vegan daughter persuaded me to swear off factory-made foul.

My argument is not against meat-eating but in favor of conscious action.

When I eat meat, I consume gristle, cartilage, marrow, neck, face, ears, cheek, gizzard, liver, heart, eyes, testicles.

Everything but brain - which I've sworn off due to mad cow disease.

And big gobs of fat - which was my working class German-American grandfather's favorite.

I do not  like the taste of kidney.

We keep a flock of 21 laying hens for whom I have great affection.

When chickens die, we do not eat them -- chiefly because they've become "buddies" -- but instead notify Mexican friends who fetch them.

Pax tecum

Alan

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