Chicken nuggets deception: what you should know.

We all love “comfort” and “finger” foods, and we all know that white chicken meat is a good source of lean protein.

So, no wonder that chicken nuggets are being marketed to us as “just lightly breaded white chicken meat”, which supposed to be good for you.  It’s also fast food industry one of the most popular selling items for kids.

I know it first hand. My niece when she was a kid used to eat chicken nuggets almost every day because her mom believed that it was “healthy” fast food.

But, just recently (well, better late than never) I’ve learned something about chicken nuggets that turned my stomach.

I was shocked to learn that the lean white chicken meat is NOT MEAT at all.

American Journal of Medicine published an article saying that in one of the chicken nuggets samples analyzed by the researchers, only 40% was lean chicken meat, the rest was a blend of fat, blood vessels, nerves, skin, cartilage and bones from chicken.

I was never a big proponent of the chicken nuggets because of low quality of meat used for nuggets (those chickens were fed lots of powerful antibiotics) plus many restaurants use cheap trans fats to fry those nuggets, which is especially harmful for people with impaired digestion and metabolism.

So, consumer beware. The so-called “healthy nuggets” are not only bad for you due to the presence of antibiotics (used in conventional chickens), deep-frying using unhealthy trans fats, but the supposedly white chicken meat is not really meat. I recommend making your own nuggets at home occasionally as a treat for your kids using organic white chicken meat and frying nuggets in grapeseed oil, which has high heating point and does not contain trans fatty acids.

Here is the link to the actual story:
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/just-what-chicken-nugget-8C11348131