Chicken is a great source of lean protein - and is a staple food for many healthy eaters. However labels and marketing slogans for chicken products can be very misleading.
Let's take a look at a few culprits:
100% All Natural
Have you every shoved a chicken breast on your Foreman grill and noticed a lot of watery stuff trickling down? That's because "All Natural" is not natural at all. 30% of chicken is "enhanced". What this means is that salt and water are injected into the chicken meat. Other additives often pumped up with salt and water or even seaweed extract.
Not only is this dubious from a health perspective (high sodium) - but also from a cost perspective. 15% of the chicken weight is from additives! (see Washington Post).
The Truthful Labeling Coalition are so incensed with this that they are taking the issue to the federal court.
100% Chicken Breast
On processed chicken products - you can often find "100% Chicken Breast" displayed in large bold type. In very small print above this is the words "made from".
Check out this product from Australia - Inghams Chicken Steaks - note the "100% Chicken Breast" at bottom right? Let's compare this with the ingredients.
"CHICKEN (51%), WATER, FLOUR (WHEAT, RYE, SOY), SALT, THICKENERS (1404, 412), "... and the list goes on.
A quick glance at the product may have convinced you that you were buying a lot of chicken breast. Not really.
Fast Food Chicken Strips
When I glance down a fast food menu - I often think "strips of chicken sounds healthy". Then I promptly remind myself - that these "chicken" strips are often an absurd concoction of any number of ingredients (see more about McDonald's Chicken Selects).
KFC chicken Strips From KFC: "Juicy, 100% all-white meat chicken breast".
Let's take a look at the ingredients (buried deep within the KFC site):
Chicken Breast Strips Containing up to 43% of a Solution of: Water, Seasoning (Soy Protein Concentrate, Salt, Rice Starch, Carrageenan, Dextrose, Onion Powder, Dehydrated Chicken Broth, Maltodextrin, Spice Extractives), Sodium Phosphate. Breaded with Wheat Flour, Salt, Spices, Monosodium Glutamate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil, Calcium Silicate (as Anticaking Agent), Modified Corn Starch, Gum Arabic, Natural Flavor, Extractives of Turmeric, and Extractives of Annatto
Doesn't seem so juicy anymore.
Crying Foul
Nothing is as it seems in the world of chicken (and we haven't even started talking about poultry farming practices).
One option is to buy your chicken meat directly from a local organic producer.
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