Interesting McNuggets Read

Here's an article that discusses the nature of Chicken McNuggets from Mcdonald's. The auhor also debunks many myths, misconceptions and misperceptions with regard to the ingredients/chemical contents of the nuggets and, furthermore, chemicals in general.

http://64.8.116.193/archive/2011/01/20/mcnugget-chemistry.aspx

I think it's pretty cool and far more interesting/believable than the scare-tactic articles he proves wrong with regards to these foods.

Here's his funny followup if you're curious: http://64.8.116.193/archive/2011/01/23/lots-of-clucking-about-chicken-mcnuggets.aspx

Can't say for sure if I'm convinced by the article (it is just one guy so I'm taking it with a pinch of salt), but I do get sick to the back teeth of hearing all this crap about how evil the fast food industry apparently is. On top of all the things you hear about battery-farming, the maltreatment of the animals in the slaughterhouses (well, hello?), the cheese in the burgers being artificial plastic shit and what-have-you (and that's enough to guilt-trip people like me whenever we do happen to eat there), there's always some scaremonger cooking up new stories about it all, as though it's a contest to see who can out-gruesome the last "big reveal" in McDonalds' master plan in its hunger for world domination. It's like, how much more evil could it possibly be? Please stop shoving the concept down our throats.

...Sorry, it would appear that that last paragraph is filled with terrible food puns.

fraggle said:

video

Futhermore, Penn and Teller did an episode on fast food:-

I've known how chicken nuggets are made for so long, I haven't even encountered those bunk myths. So yeah, like Jimmy91 said, the whole McDonalds bashing thing has gotten pretty tired and redundant. People should be going after the common stuff people try to eat to be healthy, but I guess that sort of thing is hard to spin when it's not about a fast food giant.

Good for me? Bad for me? Corn? Chicken? Shit?

I don't care. IMO, they taste pretty awful, look even worse and the environment in which they are sold is vile.

Regardless of what they are made of, I don't like them, I don't want them, I don't eat them.

It is refreshing to read these more even-handed articles on occasion, but I stopped eating McDonald's a long time ago. Not because if ingredients or nutrition or anything. Nope - more because everything they serve tastes like shit. Not that Jack in the Box is super-delicious (which I eat on occasion), but if imweating fast food, it's at least passable. McNuggets don't even taste like chicken to me.

You know that fish filet is delicious

Ralphis said:

You know that fish filet is delicious

It's all in their tartar sauce. The pollock filet is nothing special.

The author is Dr. Joe Schwarcz. He's a university professor who teaches many levels of chemistry. He specializes in trying to get fact out to the public and disproving many stupid claims made by people regarding chemicals.

I think he's pretty credible considering his information is consistent with the shit-ton I've learned in my many chemistry, physics, etc. studies. His work is also supported by plenty of separate scientific literature that I've been having to read for my research projects. I also like how he's objective, not taking side except for science (which may sound a bit confusing). It should be clear that he's not trying to defend/promote Mcnuggets, or anything else, with his publications.

He only seems to be alone on this because there are not many other people that are making public the studies that parallel what he says. Most information that's out to the general public these days are by people who nitpick startling results from a random single study.

And yeah, I hate Mcnuggets, too (from a health and taste point of view). Some of those myths may seem obscure, but search them to find another level of stupidity, misinformation and ignorance from its followers.

Bottom line: You eat fatty foods high in carbohydrates and then sit on your ass long enough and you're gonna get obese. Doesn't matter if those fatty foods came from Mickey D's or Whole Foods, improper ratios of fat, carbs, and protein in the diet coupled with lack of exercise, low hydration, stress, bad sleeping habits, etc. is a recipe for bad health, and it's a recipe many people follow every day of their lives.

I'm not the expert on fast food nor do I eat it, and I'm sure those companies haven't exactly been squeaky clean throughout their existence, but I really doubt that those places are as bad as certain fringe groups make them out to be.

Our local Mcdonalds had god awful service, you always got the wrong orders and if you changed your order it'd come out dry, and that's pretty much what stopped me from ever eating there again. Probably a blessing in disguise because recently I've heard about how they actually make their food. :/

I don't know how accurate or even current this is but I'd suggest that at some point in its history, McD's used SKSNAKE2 to make their nuggets.

Enjay said:

videos

And now I feel hungry.

I used to work at a chicken processing plant, and actually operated the machine and line used to make chicken nuggets sold to McDonald's and various supermarkets.

• We would load ~300kg (the exact weight escapes me, but they were made to a uniform size.) cubes of frozen MSM and other meat that was still edible but not couldn't be sold in another form (eg, fatty or cartilage parts.) into a grinder using a loader.

• The paste that emerged was, using templates, cut into the desired not-really-shaped-like-anything chicken nugget shapes. The templates were interesting; there were some shaped like rocket ships and stars for store-brand kids nuggets.

• They would then move along a line where they would be sanity checked, to a large cooker and another section of the factory, which had stricter hygiene regulations compared to the raw areas. After which they would be frozen, bagged and boxed in another part of the factory, ready for shipping to McDonald's.

The meat wasn't exactly mouth-watering stuff but definitely edible, although I would advise against eating them more than once every few weeks (they are full of sodium and non-nutrition empty calorie non-meat blah.)

On the other hand, I really can't stand American chicken. It is easy to spot because:

A) breasts, etc. are HUGE due to the amount of hormones and other funky chemicals they feed their animals in the US.

B) cheap

C) has this horrible taste of ammonia, because it's obviously saves some corporate 10 cents per hour to inject their meat with disinfectant than shut down their lines to clean up once a shift. Thanks 1%

I would suspect that drug-resistant e.coli and salmonella are also a factor. Again due to unhygienic conditions in primary suppliers (IE where the chickens are born and raised.) - birds are too close together and literally live in their own shit; OFC the solution is to put antibiotics in their feed and create the perfect breeding ground for super bugs. facepalm.jpg

I have been avoiding your typical fast food for a while now. Closest thing I get is Subway and I don't eat there often. I did eat at McDonalds a couple weeks back and I don't think I'll ever eat fast food after that. It wasn't that the food was undercooked or anything like that. It was the fact that I ended up with a massive head ache and felt sick. I think its the fact that they where using old fryer oil.

If you can find a store that carries or a deli that uses Boars Head meats when you want some type fast food. Some of the best meats you can get.

I get Mcdonalds fries before University, anything I should know about those lol...

McNuggets aren't the healthiest food in the world, but I never saw the big deal about the kind of meat used to make them. Whatever happened to using every part of the animal? Why is that suddenly seen as a bad thing now? It just seems a horrible waste to carefully cut out the tastiest bits and then throw the rest away, especially since an animal died in the process, but that's what some health nuts want us to do.

I dunno, maybe I'm just weird, but I feel like it's kind of disrespectful in some way to kill an animal and just toss perfectly edible parts into the trash.

This is why I don't eat fast food from chain restaurants.

geekmarine said:

Whatever happened to using every part of the animal? Why is that suddenly seen as a bad thing now? It just seems a horrible waste to carefully cut out the tastiest bits and then throw the rest away, especially since an animal died in the process, but that's what some health nuts want us to do.

Indeed. Other animals don't seem to waste food like humans do.

Gross.

They could make the nuggets out of plastic and I wouldn't care.

In honor of this topic, I went to McDonalds and had twice the nuggets I usually have. I'm stuffed.

Only chicken nuggets I usually have are the ones made by Janes that you throw in the oven at 425 for 20 minutes. I got some in there now... heh.

DoomUK said:

Indeed. Other animals don't seem to waste food like humans do.

And even humans used to make much better use of all the parts of a slaughtered animal. In the days when households/small farms were reasonably self sufficient in as much as they kept and slaughtered their own animals, nothing went to waste. The entire thing was used for food or other resources. As we've moved away from the reality of the journey from animal to food on the plate, it seems that we have gotten (unnecessarily?) fussy.

geekmarine said:

McNuggets aren't the healthiest food in the world, but I never saw the big deal about the kind of meat used to make them. Whatever happened to using every part of the animal? Why is that suddenly seen as a bad thing now? It just seems a horrible waste to carefully cut out the tastiest bits and then throw the rest away, especially since an animal died in the process, but that's what some health nuts want us to do.

I dunno, maybe I'm just weird, but I feel like it's kind of disrespectful in some way to kill an animal and just toss perfectly edible parts into the trash.

I agree. The thought that scrap meats were used to make my hotdogs or baloney doesn't bother me in the least. It's all good meat to a healthy, active individual. The only argument I'll support is, of course, concerns of excess amounts of salts and artificial preservatives being used in processed meats.

Enjay said:

;)

;)

Yeah that top one was the exact one that I remember watched a bit of. Ugh.

Phml said:

In honor of this topic, I went to McDonalds and had twice the nuggets I usually have. I'm stuffed.

40?

At least that would be double for me.

My usual McDonald's order:

Big Mac combo
20 pc nuggets value meal (20 pc nugget, 2 large fries, 2 large drinks, I started getting this when they started their 20pc nuggets for $5 deal.)
Filet-O-Fish
Southern Style Chicken Sandwich
2 McChickens
honey mustard snack wrap
2 apple pies
If I'm hungry I'll also get a mushroom and swiss angus snack wrap, which I call the "grease tube", because it's got enough mayonnaise in it to fill a bathtub.

40?

Heh, did that once when I was in highschool. Never again.

I usually just go with 9 mcnuggets, 1 large fries and 1 hamburger. Your order would probably kill me outright. :)

DuckReconMajor said:

My usual McDonald's order:

Big Mac combo
20 pc nuggets value meal (20 pc nugget, 2 large fries, 2 large drinks, I started getting this when they started their 20pc nuggets for $5 deal.)
Filet-O-Fish
Southern Style Chicken Sandwich
2 McChickens
honey mustard snack wrap
2 apple pies
If I'm hungry I'll also get a mushroom and swiss angus snack wrap, which I call the "grease tube", because it's got enough mayonnaise in it to fill a bathtub.

Dude, that's legendary! Have you ever considered competitive eating?