A bit of curiosity had me doing a quick search on Google for “chicken
mcnuggets ingredients”. The first item listed was, 'What are the
ingredients of your Chicken McNuggets? : McDonald’s'. The website
belongs to McDonald’s, so I clicked on it.
The page on McDonald’s website showed the question stated again, followed by what purports to be the answer:
Thank you for your question. McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets are made from 100% chicken breast meat.
Hmmm … Back in my less aware days, I’d eaten that stuff,
and therefore suspected that there was something inaccurate about the
statement. So, I continued reading:
However, as a percentage of the total recipe when the
batter, seasoning and oil to cook the nuggets are taken into account,
chicken meat constitutes 45% of the total Chicken McNugget, the other
ingredients account for the additional 55%. You can find full
ingredients information by clicking ‘Ingredient List’, which is in the
‘Food’ section of www.mcdonalds.co.uk.
Chicken McNuggets:
EITHER: Chicken (45%), Coating [Vegetable Oil
(Rapeseed, Sunflower), Wheat Flour, Water (8%), Maize Flour, Modified
Starch, Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Whey
Powder (from Milk), Flavour Enhancer (Potassium Chloride), Egg Albumen
(Free Range Egg), Ground Pepper, Breadcrumb (Wheat Flour, Salt), Salt,
Dextrose, Ground Celery], Water (7%), Potato Starch, Vegetable Oil
(Rapeseed, Sunflower), Natural Flavouring (from Free Range Egg), Flavour
Enhancer (Potassium Chloride).
OR: Chicken Breast Meat (43%) Water, Flours (Wheat,
Maize), Vegetable Oil (Sunflower, Rapeseed), Wheat Semolina, Starches,
Modified Starch, Flavourings (contains Gluten), Dried Glucose Syrup,
Breadcrumb (Wheat Flour, Salt), Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate,
Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate, Potassium Hydrogen Carbonate, Mono-Calcium
Phosphate), Potassium Chloride, Spices (Pepper, Celery), Salt, Sugar,
Celery Extract. Prepared in the restaurants using a non-hydrogenated
vegetable oil
Notice that the original statement saying that Chicken
McNuggets are all breast meat and that the meat is 45% of the total may
not be true. Apparently, McDonald’s has two recipes for McNuggets, but
they don’t tell us how to know which one you’ll be getting. If you get
the first option, you do get the previously claimed 45% of chicken, but
nothing to indicate that it’s breast meat. If you get the second option,
you get only 43% chicken, but it is breast meat.
From there, it gets even more confusing. In the first
option, it’s made to look like the coating consists of the rest of the
ingredients. However, closer inspection reveals otherwise. Notice the
bracket [ immediately after the word "Coating". The coating ingredients
are only those specified within the beginning and ending brackets, like
so: [ingredient1, ingredient2, ... ].
That leaves us to see that the meat also includes 7%
water, potato starch, vegetable oil, natural flavoring (which is
anything but natural), and potassium chloride as a flavor enhancer.
Doesn’t that sound yummy?
Does the first version look like it actually contains 45% meat? No, it does not.
The second option, the one with 43% meat, just mixes the
ingredients up. Unsurprisingly, they include a bunch of chemicals and we
have no idea how much is in the meat or how much is in the coating,
though it probably doesn’t matter, unless you order the stuff and throw
over half of it away!
So, though technically McDonald’s abides by the law and
provides a list of ingredients, they certainly don’t make it easy. They
also try to slip away from it by throwing up the “nutrition” label. The
information on those is a farce, as I discuss in Nutrition Labels Are a
Bad Joke, Designed to Mislead, Not to Inform. Just remember that
nutrition labels do not tell you what chemicals have been added.
It’s up to you, of course, to decided whether to eat the
stuff that McDonald’s calls food—but you won’t get me to touch something
passed off as food when the seller doesn’t even want me to know what’s
in it!
http://in5d.com/how-mcdonalds-evades-info-on-ingredients.html
