Chicken Nuggets--the good, the bad, and the ugly

My kids love chicken nuggets. They used to love eating McDonald's. Alexa would get a hamburger and Carter would get chicken nuggets. Once I saw Food Inc. and started reading Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, well, that changed me and my kids' diet. I read this interesting passage from his book that I copied from a web site online:

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.

I get that you would need to consume a large amount of McNuggets to obtain the lethal dose, but still...yuck! How can you have knowledge of this information and still give these to your child? This is one of many strange ingredients that appear in a "chicken" nugget that actually contains 38 ingredients and is made up of 56% corn! I found this interesting article that goes into further depth.

But the facts are the facts. Kids like chicken nuggets. I don't always have the time to make them from scratch, and they are not always as good when I do. We found these at our grocery store, Harris Teeter, and they are quite popular in this house!

Coleman has chicken nuggets and chicken strips available (among other products) and they are humanely raised and sustainably farmed.


Enjoy!

=o)
Jen

Several reasons to eat Organic Meat!

Here is an interesting compilation of articles (see link at the end of this post) that discuss the result of the industrialization of our meat products--not a happy ending.
The relationship between E. Coli and grain fed cows is something that I, even AFTER having a daughter that was infected with this bacteria, and my husband, who has worked in the Food Safety industry for over 15 years, were unaware of! The relationship between a ruminant's diet (which affects the pH of their stomachs) and the bacteria in their gut that thrive there can be extremely dangerous. Not until I watched Food Inc. did I learn (and research more) about the correlation between feeding cows corn, a grain that they are not designed to digest, and the deadly bacteria, E. Coli. There are many reasons for this change of diet and thus the industrialization of the meat industry--mainly, quantity over quality and MONEY become the main issues. If you would like more information about all of this, I suggest you read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He provides a lot of incredible and unbelievable information about our "food chain". You will definitely walk away thinking about things you've never thought about before.
















Please check out the articles below. Whether you agree or not, it is still very interesting and I feel like there is a lot of validity to be found here.
This also helps to explain my passion for all of this. Since watching Food Inc., I have not eaten ANY meat that has not been organic and in the case of beef, grassfed. It is personal to me as the emergence of E. Coli, a bacterial infection that most likely was derived from cattle, has affected and infected my family. The inhumane treatment of feedlot animals is something I find truly disgusting and unsanitary. I could go on and on, but I'll save that for another post! ;o)

http://www.eatwild.com/foodsafety.html

=o)
Jen

The Times They Are a-Changin'

There is so much I want to say, so much I want to share about this "food journey" we have been travelling along, that I just don't know where to begin.
I found this quote yesterday and thought it was so fitting:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don't criticize what you can't understand...

~Bob Dylan

This is an excerpt from the song "The Times They Are a-Changin'". It really got me thinking. People are so quick to criticize and condemn you for the changes you make in your life even, in this case, when it is a positive one. Until you have walked in my shoes and watched your child struggle for her life, it is probably difficult to understand the helplessless and pain that it's possible to feel... I am not asking anyone to change their lives, but just want to share my journey and experiences in hopes that maybe I have some knowledge that others are unaware of and would appreciate knowing. There is SO much I just didn't know. Watching Food Inc. was definitely the catalyst to this change in our eating habits. Watching Barbara Kowalcyk on Food Inc. (who my husband had the pleasure of meeting the day Food Inc. aired on PBS) share her devastating experience of losing her 2.5 year old son to E. Coli and HUS was just so sad--the same diseases my daughter had at age 3 that we are so lucky she survived... So I guess all I am asking and hoping is that people have an open mind to change--change can be good! And knowledge can be good. Ignorance, unfortunately, is not bliss.

So with that said...I am ready to begin sharing recipes and tips and all that I have learned and am learning and if you have something to teach me, I am ready to listen with an open mind!

Thanks for stopping by! Comments are welcome!

=o)
Jen