6 ms·

Funny thing that I heard recently. McDonalds is the greats buyer of chicken in the US. Quite surprising, considering they don't even have that much chicken in t

Funny thing that I heard recently. McDonalds is the greats buyer of chicken in the US. Quite surprising, considering they don't even have that much chicken in their menu.

_bxg1 7y ago
Pretty sure their nuggets are a huge seller
- Someone1234 7y ago
  They are, but they don't contain much chicken meat. 40% of the filler is meat and the rest is "other"[0] (fat, tissue, spicule, etc). Including the breading the majority of the weight of a chicken nugget isn't chicken meat. Contrast this with Chick-Fil-A's nuggets, which are 100% chicken breast meat (with thinner breading to boot). [0] https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugget/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugge...
  - jghn 7y ago
    What animal do you suppose "fat, tissue, spicule, etc" comes from? They could still be driving a huge amount of chickens purchased merely from that
  - pkaye 7y ago
    McDonalds changed it to use white boneless chicken a few years back.
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      That was a misleading marketing push. Here is their exact wording: > Our tender, juicy Chicken McNuggets are made with 100% white meat chicken and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Made WITH not made OF. Meaning all the meat within a McDonalds nugget is 100% white chicken meat, not that ALL of a McDonald's nugget is 100% chicken. It is designed to be misread/misunderstood. McNuggets still don't contain 100% chicken or even close, and the fact that 100% of the meat they do contain is "white meat chicken" isn't a significant change. Go taste a whole-chicken nugget (like Chick-Fil-A's) next to a McDonalds nugget. Heck go look inside them, at the filler. It is night and day.
      - pkaye 7y ago
        I find the Chick-Fil-A stuff tends to have way to much sodium. I just can't tolerate that saltiness.
        Someone1234 7y ago
        They do have roughly 30% more salt (122.5mg/per nugget of sodium vs. 85mg/per nugget at McDonalds).
      - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        Chick-Fil-A comes with a side order of bigotry so I'll pass.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        The ingredients list (by law, in order of abundance) is available at http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutrition1/ingredientslist.pdf http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutrition1/ingredientslist.pd.... > White boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning [autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil,dextrose, citric acid], sodium phosphates, natural flavor (botanical source). The only real space in that list for fillers to be found is the food starch, but it's less abundant than water, so if there were a bunch of fillers, it'd be pretty soupy. (Its typical use is as a binder, and it'd make sense for it to serve that purpose in a nugget - you're not going to manage to make a white-meat nugget without some.) There is certainly a texture difference between a whole-chunk nugget and one made from pureed meat, but you'd see the same sort of texture difference if you ground up a filet steak, too.
      - cr0sh 7y ago
        Also - that "white meat" is actually a form of bleached dark meat. McD's used to sell chicken nuggets that were a mix of dark meat and white meat. Some were a piece of dark, other's were made of breast meat chunks. But consumers being the a-holes that they are (rant mode on)... (this whole thing really bothers me - the "American Consumer" has pretty much single handedly ruined meat products in the United States by insisting that such products not remind them of live animals - so first "breast meat" then "white meat" and might as well be "bland meat" - then they went after pork "the other white meat" - making it so damn lean it's flavorless - you can't get any good fat anymore on your pork chops - with ground beef you have to look for the 70/30 mixture to have any real flavor in your patties. Steaks and ribs they trim off a ton of the fat, and for most supermarket briskets the Point is "gone" - so no burnt ends for you. All its done is make meat - at least from the supermarket - almost flavorless. You have to either buy commercial meat which hasn't been trimmed, or you have to go to a real butcher - either way, you end up spending a ton more money just to get the flavor back... (ok rant off) ...where was I? Oh, as I was saying, consumers decided that all they wanted was "white breast meat", but McDs knew that dark meat is cheaper. So this food scientist at some USC university (IIRC) came up with a method to bleach the dark meat, then blend it with the white, and you get this "ground chicken" like product that can be molded into perfect nugget shapes - all shaped consistently, all fry consistently. Win for the restaurant. But I remember real nuggets - there were two different shapes that were the dark meat; flavorful, tender, wonderful. Then one shape (that was "round") that was a disk of white meat (tasted good, but dryer, and less tender). Today, they are all a uniform shape, flavor, and texture profile, all "white meat" - and the texture is somewhere between that of dark meat, and breast meat. I just don't get people. I love dark meat, I love flavor. Give me the fat, give me well marbled beef and pork. Nothing like a well-smoked brisket, or pulled pork shoulder, or a wonder slab of pork belly. People who say otherwise - I don't know what to think about them. Oh - here we go - UGA, not USC: https://phys.org/news/2005-08-uga-scientist-dark-chicken-meat.html https://phys.org/news/2005-08-uga-scientist-dark-chicken-mea...
  - Spivak 7y ago
    This is hopefully a stupid question but doesn't that make Chick-Fil-A's nuggets "wings" or "chicken breast chunks." I mean they're good -- don't get me wrong but I don't see anything wrong with nuggets made by grinding up some of the ugly parts of the chicken. I basically consider them two separate things. I thought it was actually kind of silly for them to grind up the good bits of the chicken just for a marketing push.
  - barkingcat 7y ago
    Even if they don't contain much chicken meat, just 40% of meat takes up a significant part of the chicken supply chain. I'd say if McDonald's does decide to one day use 100% of chicken meat in their nuggets, the entire world chicken market would not be able to supply them (and the world chicken market would need to start more farms than exists today to make up that 60% shortfall).
blang 7y ago
Looks like 9 menu items: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-sandwiches.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-san...
barkingcat 7y ago
Nothing about the scale of McDonalds should suprise you. It is one of the top agrifood supply chain businesses on the planet.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  This is one of the big points of the Food Inc documentary. It doesn't matter if you eat at McDonalds or not— if you eat anything they serve (beef, chicken, potatoes, whatever), you're eating food made to their specifications, as they're the single biggest buyer of all of that stuff.
papito 7y ago
Also, they are the largest consumer of apples.

Funny thing that I heard recently. McDonalds is the greats buyer of chicken in the US. Quite surprising, considering they don't even have that much chicken in their menu.

_bxg1 7y ago

Pretty sure their nuggets are a huge seller

Someone1234 7y ago
They are, but they don't contain much chicken meat. 40% of the filler is meat and the rest is "other"[0] (fat, tissue, spicule, etc). Including the breading the majority of the weight of a chicken nugget isn't chicken meat. Contrast this with Chick-Fil-A's nuggets, which are 100% chicken breast meat (with thinner breading to boot). [0] https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugget/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/10/whats-chicken-nugge...
- jghn 7y ago
  What animal do you suppose "fat, tissue, spicule, etc" comes from? They could still be driving a huge amount of chickens purchased merely from that
- pkaye 7y ago
  McDonalds changed it to use white boneless chicken a few years back.
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    That was a misleading marketing push. Here is their exact wording: > Our tender, juicy Chicken McNuggets are made with 100% white meat chicken and no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Made WITH not made OF. Meaning all the meat within a McDonalds nugget is 100% white chicken meat, not that ALL of a McDonald's nugget is 100% chicken. It is designed to be misread/misunderstood. McNuggets still don't contain 100% chicken or even close, and the fact that 100% of the meat they do contain is "white meat chicken" isn't a significant change. Go taste a whole-chicken nugget (like Chick-Fil-A's) next to a McDonalds nugget. Heck go look inside them, at the filler. It is night and day.
    - pkaye 7y ago
      I find the Chick-Fil-A stuff tends to have way to much sodium. I just can't tolerate that saltiness.
      - Someone1234 7y ago
        They do have roughly 30% more salt (122.5mg/per nugget of sodium vs. 85mg/per nugget at McDonalds).
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      Chick-Fil-A comes with a side order of bigotry so I'll pass.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      The ingredients list (by law, in order of abundance) is available at http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutrition1/ingredientslist.pdf http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutrition1/ingredientslist.pd.... > White boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning [autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring (botanical source), safflower oil,dextrose, citric acid], sodium phosphates, natural flavor (botanical source). The only real space in that list for fillers to be found is the food starch, but it's less abundant than water, so if there were a bunch of fillers, it'd be pretty soupy. (Its typical use is as a binder, and it'd make sense for it to serve that purpose in a nugget - you're not going to manage to make a white-meat nugget without some.) There is certainly a texture difference between a whole-chunk nugget and one made from pureed meat, but you'd see the same sort of texture difference if you ground up a filet steak, too.
    - cr0sh 7y ago
      Also - that "white meat" is actually a form of bleached dark meat. McD's used to sell chicken nuggets that were a mix of dark meat and white meat. Some were a piece of dark, other's were made of breast meat chunks. But consumers being the a-holes that they are (rant mode on)... (this whole thing really bothers me - the "American Consumer" has pretty much single handedly ruined meat products in the United States by insisting that such products not remind them of live animals - so first "breast meat" then "white meat" and might as well be "bland meat" - then they went after pork "the other white meat" - making it so damn lean it's flavorless - you can't get any good fat anymore on your pork chops - with ground beef you have to look for the 70/30 mixture to have any real flavor in your patties. Steaks and ribs they trim off a ton of the fat, and for most supermarket briskets the Point is "gone" - so no burnt ends for you. All its done is make meat - at least from the supermarket - almost flavorless. You have to either buy commercial meat which hasn't been trimmed, or you have to go to a real butcher - either way, you end up spending a ton more money just to get the flavor back... (ok rant off) ...where was I? Oh, as I was saying, consumers decided that all they wanted was "white breast meat", but McDs knew that dark meat is cheaper. So this food scientist at some USC university (IIRC) came up with a method to bleach the dark meat, then blend it with the white, and you get this "ground chicken" like product that can be molded into perfect nugget shapes - all shaped consistently, all fry consistently. Win for the restaurant. But I remember real nuggets - there were two different shapes that were the dark meat; flavorful, tender, wonderful. Then one shape (that was "round") that was a disk of white meat (tasted good, but dryer, and less tender). Today, they are all a uniform shape, flavor, and texture profile, all "white meat" - and the texture is somewhere between that of dark meat, and breast meat. I just don't get people. I love dark meat, I love flavor. Give me the fat, give me well marbled beef and pork. Nothing like a well-smoked brisket, or pulled pork shoulder, or a wonder slab of pork belly. People who say otherwise - I don't know what to think about them. Oh - here we go - UGA, not USC: https://phys.org/news/2005-08-uga-scientist-dark-chicken-meat.html https://phys.org/news/2005-08-uga-scientist-dark-chicken-mea...
- Spivak 7y ago
  This is hopefully a stupid question but doesn't that make Chick-Fil-A's nuggets "wings" or "chicken breast chunks." I mean they're good -- don't get me wrong but I don't see anything wrong with nuggets made by grinding up some of the ugly parts of the chicken. I basically consider them two separate things. I thought it was actually kind of silly for them to grind up the good bits of the chicken just for a marketing push.
- barkingcat 7y ago
  Even if they don't contain much chicken meat, just 40% of meat takes up a significant part of the chicken supply chain. I'd say if McDonald's does decide to one day use 100% of chicken meat in their nuggets, the entire world chicken market would not be able to supply them (and the world chicken market would need to start more farms than exists today to make up that 60% shortfall).

blang 7y ago

Looks like 9 menu items: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-sandwiches.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/chicken-and-san...

barkingcat 7y ago

Nothing about the scale of McDonalds should suprise you. It is one of the top agrifood supply chain businesses on the planet.

mikepurvis 7y ago
This is one of the big points of the Food Inc documentary. It doesn't matter if you eat at McDonalds or not— if you eat anything they serve (beef, chicken, potatoes, whatever), you're eating food made to their specifications, as they're the single biggest buyer of all of that stuff.

papito 7y ago

Also, they are the largest consumer of apples.