Year 3, Day 44: What's in A Chicken Nugget?

Trying to stay strong. After last night's chocolate debacle I once again try to steer myself out of a diet-fishtail. It's not easy and and the weather of all things is not helping my mood. We expect that in April there are more warm moments than cold ones. It's OK if all the cold ones don't go away, but the cold, gray, rainy days can be downright depressing. It's easier to have seasonal affective disorder when it's 34 degrees AFTER opening day than during the winter. Well, that's what I think.

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Snack
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar
Five STicks Beef Jerky
1 Cameo Apple

Lunch: Russo's ($5.45)
Romaine, red pepper, red onion, feta
chicken, broccoli, mushrooms
balsamic vinegar, pepperocini

Dinner:
Trout a la Emily
Salad

What's Really in a Chicken Nugget?

The following two paragraphs lifted from another Web site's description of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan:

“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.

According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”