What You Need To Know About "Chicken" Nuggets

American's spend more money on fast food than each media outlet combined (music, movies, books etc). The $240 billion industry is not only dependent on the burger and fries, but the "chicken nugget". 

How is a chicken nugget made?

• Mechanical separation- a cost-effective way to "smooth out" bone remnants left after the de-boning process. 
• The process results in excessive bacteria, which is fixed by washing the meat in ammonia. To cover up that delicious ammonia flavor, the meat is then re-flavored artificially and dyed to resemble to type of meat it once was.

Ingredients

White boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning (autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil, dextrose, citric acid, rosemary), sodium phosphates, seasoning (canola oil, mono- and diglycerides, extractives of rosemary). Battered and breaded with: water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, food starch-modified, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, whey, corn starch. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.

If you didn't know chicken McNuggets contain over 30 ingredients, let's take a second to just one of them. TBHQ, a form of butane, which the FDA allows to be in .02% of your food. Consuming 1% has been proved to cause nausea, delirium, collapse, tinnitus, vomiting, asthma, rhinitis and dermatitis. Long term doses of TBHQ in laboratory animals have shown a tendency for them to develop stomach cancer, DNA damage, and altered estrogen levels in women. McDonald's isn't the only one to blame, Wendy's also has 30 ingredients in their nuggets "recipe".

Extra Gross Facts

There are 35 ingredients in Burger King's fries.

A strawberry milkshake from McDonald's contains 50 chemicals to mimic the taste of a real strawberry.

A few years ago, the FDA approved the use of bacteriophages (viruses) that help kill microbes (found in hot dogs and lunch meat). They've added them to our food to increase shelf life.

FDA laws allow for an average of 30 insect fragments per 100 grams of peanut butter. In that same half cup of peanut butter, you'll also find at least one rodent hair (on average).