Free Range Chicken: A Tough Choice

Last week I happened to eat chicken on two occasions. On the first, Tea Andy and I purchased some 'free-range' chicken at the local grocery store. On the second, I ordered up some deep fried chicken chunks from a street stall. While I admit to enjoying both versions, they were so distinct in flavour and texture that it was hard to imagine them coming from the same species of animal. While I am always suspect of labels such as 'free-range' or 'organic', it was clear from the stringy and flavourful texture of the first meat, that the animal had exercised and had most likely eaten a mixed diet comprised of local insects and herbs in addition to engineered feed product. The extreme tenderness and lack of flavour of the second meat was clearly a result of factory farming. To leave the moral issue of factory farming aside, lets consider for a moment the implications of this disparity in texture.  

Toughness or chewiness is a sure sign of wild or free-range meat. Tough meat forces one to chew more, this promotes the flow of digestive juices that break down proteins and send nutrients into the blood. Aside from this, chewing slows down the process of eating and encourages one to eat less. It is interesting that the word 'tender' is probably the most common adjective used to describe meat in advertising. Perhaps in the future, as more people become aware of the distinctive texture and health benefits of free-range meat, the word 'tough' will one day be a more effective selling point for meat.  

I found this fascinating excerpt from the Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, on the role of the McDonald's chicken McNugget in the evolution of the poultry industry. It documents how a single company was responsible for not only restructuring the American poultry industry and dramatically changing the eating habits of a large portion of the world, but also for essentially re-engineering the chicken as an animal. The following is an except from this article:

"I have an idea," Fred Turner, the chairman of McDonald's, told one of his suppliers in 1979. "I want a chicken finger-food without bones, about the size of your thumb. Can you do it?" The supplier, an executive at Keystone Foods, ordered a group of technicians to get to work in the lab, where they were soon joined by food scientists from McDonald's. Poultry consumption in the United States was growing, a trend with alarming implications for a fast food chain that only sold hamburgers. The nation's chicken meat had traditionally been provided by hens that were too old to lay eggs; after World War II a new poultry industry based in Delaware and Virginia lowered the cost of raising chicken, while medical research touted the health benefits of eating it. Fred Turner wanted McDonald's to sell a chicken dish that wouldn't clash with the chain's sensibility. After six months of intensive research, the Keystone lab developed new technology for the manufacture of McNuggets — small pieces of reconstituted chicken, composed mainly of white meat, that were held together by stabilizers, breaded, fried, frozen, then reheated. The initial test-marketing of McNuggets was so successful that McDonald's enlisted another company, Tyson Foods, to guarantee an adequate supply. Based in Arkansas, Tyson was one of the nation's leading chicken processors, and it soon developed a new breed of chicken to facilitate the production of McNuggets. Dubbed "Mr. McDonald," the new breed had unusually large breasts. 

Chicken McNuggets were introduced nationwide in 1983. Within one month of their launch, the McDonald's Corporation had become the second-largest purchaser of chicken in the United States, surpassed only by KFC. McNuggets tasted good, they were easy to chew, and they appeared to be healthier than other items on the menu at McDonald's. After all, they were made out of chicken. But their health benefits were illusory. A chemical analysis of McNuggets by a researcher at Harvard Medical School found that their "fatty acid profile" more closely resembled beef than poultry. They were cooked in beef tallow, like McDonald's fries. The chain soon switched to vegetable oil, adding "beef extract" to McNuggets during the manufacturing process in order to retain their familiar taste. Chicken McNuggets, which became wildly popular among young children, still derive much of their flavor from beef additives — and contain twice as much fat per ounce as a hamburger.
 
The McNuggets helped change not only the American diet but also its system for raising and processing poultry. "The impact of McNuggets was so huge that it changed the industry," the president of ConAgra Poultry, the nation's third-largest chicken processor, later acknowledged. Twenty years ago, most chicken was sold whole; today about 90 percent of the chicken sold in the United States has been cut into pieces, cutlets, or nuggets. In 1992 American consumption of chicken for the first time surpassed the consumption of beef. Gaining the McNuggets contract helped turn Tyson Foods into the world's largest chicken processor. Tyson now manufactures about half of the nation's McNuggets and sells chicken to ninety of the one hundred largest restaurant chains. It is a vertically integrated company that breeds, slaughters, and processes chicken. It does not, however, raise the birds. It leaves the capital expenditures and the financial risks of that task to thousands of "independent contractors."

Free range chicken is available in most supermarkets in Taiwan. Look for the cuts that are roughly twice as expensive. Or go down to your local market and pick up one of those bad boys in the picture. If you've never seen your meat killed in front of you, think of it as an educational adventure in a more humane and healthier way to eat.

The circus continues

Just to catch you up on some of the latest goings on...

It looks like the U.S. beef imports circus is going to continue. After a dancing donkey and poodle act, it appears the issue will go to a referendum. The only thing more ridiculous than letting the beef industry sway U.S. foreign policy, is the idea that the average Taiwanese person is informed enough to decide Taiwan's domestic policy. While the ruling KMT has used the beef debacle to give a thorough demonstration of their ineptness, the opposition DPP has proven to be merely vacuous and opportunistic. Along with pushing for the referendum and the cost and distraction it would entail, they were quick to point out that it should be held during other elections to ensure the minimum turnout is achieved. In other words, they know nobody cares enough about this issue to actually turn up and vote on it.

On the other side of the coin, the New York Times recently published an article exposing the questionable practices used by the U.S. beef industry in hamburger processing. In recent years processed hamburger has included a product that is created from 'fatty trimmings' that in the past were not considered safe enough to be allowed for human consumption and were only used in pet foods. This 'jelly' is created from the eyes, tonsils, ganglia and other undesirable parts of the cow. These 'trimmings' are highly prone to ecoli and salmonella contamination. A company called Beef Products inc. came up with a novel method whereby the jelly created from these parts is gassed with ammonia to kill the bacteria. The USDA allowed this product to be included in hamburger based only on the findings of studies funded by the company in question. For some reason, ammonia is not listed as an ingredient, despite the fact that handlers of this product have detected a strong odor of ammonia emanating from the jelly even when frozen and have returned the product as unfit for consumption. On top of this, contamination has been detected on several occasions in their product and large-scale outbreaks of food poisoning have been linked to it as well. Several scientists working for the USDA were in disagreement of their employer's decision to approve the product.

Carl S. Custer, a former U.S.D.A. microbiologist, said he and other scientists were concerned that the department had approved the treated beef for sale without obtaining independent validation of the potential safety risk. Another department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

This product is used in the hamburger of fast food chains like McDonald's and Burger King. It is also used in the school lunch program in the U.S. as it reduces their hamburger budget by a million dollars a year.

And while we happen to be on the issue of the U.S. school lunch program. This article from Washington Monthly outlines the kind of questionable practices that are carried out by this program under the approval of the USDA. KFC and Subway are allowed to set up shop in schools throughout the country, while the quality of meals produced by the program itself is equally unhealthy. Revenue from soda and junk food vending machines now provides a vital portion of funding for most schools. State governments also benefit from the sale of these products in schools as most have now instituted a tax on sugared beverages based on the logic that they are unhealthy. The Donkey went on a rant about this obvious hypocritical conflict of interest in an earlier post.

But to return to the circus in Taiwan, the U.S. government has recently shown they will not let offal interfere with their geopolitical agenda by approving the sale of 'Patriot' missiles to Taiwan by Lockheed Martin. The missiles could theoretically be used to shoot down short-range missiles launched against Taiwan by China. I guess we should be thankful that the interests of Lockheed Martin balance out the interests of Beef Products Inc. in the U.S. Congress. I feel safer already.

Review: The Double Sausage McMuffin with Egg

While the Chinese lay claim to the revolutionary invention of the noodle, Western culture has given us the Sausage McMuffin with Egg. And while we celebrate the likes of Alexander Graham Bell and Henry Ford, the heroic inventors of these culinary staples remain anonymous. Thus is the cruel indifference of history.

As any civilized foreigner living in Taiwan knows, a proper Western breakfast is impossible to find. Yes, there are a few pretenders who claim to fulfill the promise of bacon, eggs, toast and hashbrowns, but all versions of these deceptively simple dishes are marred by fatal flaws. Half-cooked sweet bacon anyone? Watery scrambled eggs? How about some warm, sweetened white bread with margarine masquerading as toast? Or maybe a couple of cocktail wieners that we refer to as ‘sausages’...Please.

Thus when us true gourmands are lucky enough to awake on a Sunday morning before 10:30, Where do we head for guaranteed nourishment, comfort, and hangover relief? You guessed it: McDonald’s. And when we arrive, we don’t waste time gaping at the photos of the various breakfast sandwiches on offer, we order up the undisputed king of breakfast sandwiches: the Sausage McMuffin with Egg. In this sandwich we find, not only a day’s worth of calories to keep us trucking, but also a complex mélange of textures and flavour sensations. The sour, crispy yet chewy English muffin; the supple and mysteriously formed egg; the gooey, sunshine happiness of the cheese; and most important, the greasy, salty, goodness of the sausage patty. I have always been fully satisfied with this sandwich. Remove or substitute any of the ingredients, and you will have an inferior product. But what if one were to zero in on the tastiest of these ingredients—the sausage patty—and double it. I had never considered such a move. Would this not be like doubling the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere? or adding an extra set of breasts to a perfectly formed young lady? Or would it in fact be achieving what the Chinese refer to as Shuang Xi: the elusive ‘double lucky’?

It was like Christmas morn when I unwrapped this new creation. And when I first beheld it, I’m not ashamed to say the image of baby Jesus in swaddling clothes flashed before my eyes. There it was, the breakfast sandwich I knew so well and loved so dearly, but with twice the meats. I sucked back a string of drool as I raised it to my eager lips. My eyes rolled back into my head and I sunk my teeth in. BOOM! My head snapped back as an H-bomb of sausage exploded in my mouth. It was sausage, sausage and then more sausage. The delicate blend of delights that one finds in the Sausage McMuffin with Egg proper, had been replaced by an obtuse sausage delivery mechanism. The problem was not an excess of meat per se, but rather an excess of the grease and salt carried by the meat. Even for a salt and grease lover such as myself, it was overpowering. This sandwich is like the embodiment of a lost Aesop’s fable, with the moral of the story being: “too much of a good thing is not a good thing” or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Give the Double Sausage McMuffin with Egg a pass and stick to the original.