Researchers Study Chicken Nuggets And Found Bone Pieces
Mississippi researchers studied chicken nuggets and guess what they found: Two nuggets they examined consisted of 50 per cent or less chicken-muscle tissue.
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-per-cent 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,” said lead author Dr. Richard deShazo of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
“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 said.
“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, a non-profit trade group representing the U.S. chicken industry.
According to the NCC, its member producers and processors account for about 95 per cent 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, shes said.
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.