my toxic upbringing
Growing up in the 80s, I loved all things essential to that decade--Duran Duran, Tiger Beat, Michael Jackson and Chicken McNuggets! The McNugget was created in 1983 and I have very fond memories of experimenting with the BBQ sauce and the Sweet-n-Sour sauce, trying to determine which one would be my favorite. I especially liked rationing the sweet goo so that it would last for all six nuggets but get entirely used up by the end of the meal. If I had extra packets, I happily dunked my french fries into the sauce, feeling the thrill of the sweet-n-salty combo. Gourmet!
If you ask someone what's in a nugget, it's likely they'll answer "chicken, breading, oil." Seems simple enough. Turns out that the chicken nuggets aren't exactly as chickeny as one might suspect. There are 38 ingredients in a McNugget. Apparently, Mickey D's started printing ingredients and nutritional information on packaging in 2005, but I wouldn't know because I haven't eaten there in years. Most troubling of the McNugget tale is many of the 38 ingredients in a nugget are completely synthetic, made in chemical plants. You just can't find sodium acid pyrophosphate in the spice rack.
These synthetic ingredients must be edible, though...right? Surely Ronald McDonald cares enough about children to not poison them. One anti-binding agent is called "dimethylpholysiloxene." It is a suspected carcinogen. Then there is butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), for freshness. TBHQ is a form of butane (lighter fluid) which has been proven to cause vomitting, nasea, delirium, ringing in the ears, a sense of suffocation, and collapse when consumed in amounts equal or greater than a gram. How much TBHQ comes in a SuperBowl Sunday 50 piece?
I'm glad I don't eat that stuff anymore, and dammit I should have known better accepting food from a clown. So maybe it's my fault. But in the end, I feel very angry and deceived that my fond food memories from childhood were actually nothing more than a greasy backseat chemical seduction. (And then there's the whole Michael Jackson thing.)
If you ask someone what's in a nugget, it's likely they'll answer "chicken, breading, oil." Seems simple enough. Turns out that the chicken nuggets aren't exactly as chickeny as one might suspect. There are 38 ingredients in a McNugget. Apparently, Mickey D's started printing ingredients and nutritional information on packaging in 2005, but I wouldn't know because I haven't eaten there in years. Most troubling of the McNugget tale is many of the 38 ingredients in a nugget are completely synthetic, made in chemical plants. You just can't find sodium acid pyrophosphate in the spice rack.
These synthetic ingredients must be edible, though...right? Surely Ronald McDonald cares enough about children to not poison them. One anti-binding agent is called "dimethylpholysiloxene." It is a suspected carcinogen. Then there is butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), for freshness. TBHQ is a form of butane (lighter fluid) which has been proven to cause vomitting, nasea, delirium, ringing in the ears, a sense of suffocation, and collapse when consumed in amounts equal or greater than a gram. How much TBHQ comes in a SuperBowl Sunday 50 piece?
I'm glad I don't eat that stuff anymore, and dammit I should have known better accepting food from a clown. So maybe it's my fault. But in the end, I feel very angry and deceived that my fond food memories from childhood were actually nothing more than a greasy backseat chemical seduction. (And then there's the whole Michael Jackson thing.)
posted by Freewendy @ 8:04 PM
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