Do you know what's in Mcdonalds Mcchicken nuggets???

Can you guess what this substance in the photo is? Its not strawberry soft serve ice cream. I can tell you one thing: it has a lot in common with Silly Putty. Yes, that pink gooey stuff that kids love to jam into carpet. That stuff that you tell them not to put into their mouths.

The photo is showing mechanically separated chicken, or the inside of a chicken nugget before it is shaped and fried and packed with chemicals to keep it from going rancid or falling apart.

Jamie Oliver, Fooducate, and The Omnivore Dilemma expose the truth about chicken nuggets. But, are parents and kids really listening?

In 2003 a group of obese teenagers brought a lawsuit against McDonald’s causing a federal judge to defame the beloved McNuggets. Judge Sweet called the McNuggets a “McFrankenstein creation of various elements not utilized by the home cook.”He then cataloged 38 ingredients, claiming McDonald’s marketed on the border of deception since the food was not simply what it purports, a piece of chicken battered and fried.

A full serving of the better white meat chicken McNuggets now has 10 fewer calories than cheeseburger, and about 33 more ingredients. So, let’s take a look at what these ingredients are:

Of the 38 ingredients, Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore Dilemma, points out that 13 of them are derived from corn: corn-fed chicken, mono-, tri-, and diglycerides, dextrose, lecithin, chicken broth, yellow corn flour, modified corn starch (listed twice), cornstarch, vegetable shortening, partially hydrogenated corn oil, and citric acid.

There is also wheat batter and the potential use of hydrogenated soybean oil, canola oil, or cotton oil depending on the market price.

Chicken McNuggets also contain several synthetic or man made ingredients. These ingredients don’t come from a farmer’s field but from none other than petroleum. Yes, that is right. Petroleum.
Petroleum chemicals are what make processed foods possible because they keep the organic material from going rancid and give them a longer shelf life. The list  includes leavening agents, sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are synthetic antioxidants that prevent the meat from spoiling.

Of course, then you have your anti-foaming agent: dimethylpolysiloxene,(the same ingredient they put in silly putty!!!) a suspected carcinogen, and established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector. Apparently the problem of the nuggets foaming during frying warrants the adding of carcinogens and toxic substances to our children’s food.

The ingredient that tops the list, the one found in Silly Putty, and other things you find around your house… TBHQ. It’s an antioxidant derived from petroleum and a form of butane. Yes, lighter fluid. So, not only is it toxic and borderline poisonous, but also flammable. Thanks Ronald that was real nice of you!!!!

According to the FDA, it allows the use of TBHQ sparingly in foods to help preserve freshness. This sparing amount is 0.02 percent. Well, that’s a good thing because ingesting 1 gram can cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse. 5 grams of TBHQ can kill a person. I am sure Tyson knows what they are doing when they add it to our children’s food, though.

It’s not just McDonald’s McNuggets that cause concern. Pick up any package of nuggets in the grocer and read the back of the box.  What ingredients do you see? Definitely not just chicken, flour, and oil.

When Jamie Oliver lined up a group of school children and showed them how to make a chicken nugget, he witnessed nary a flinch. They all concurred that they would still eat the nugget.
But would you still serve it?