School Days

Although the thermometer is still reaching into the 90s, summer is officially over in our house.  School bells started ringing yesterday, and my first grader and fifth grader headed back to class.  Being in first grade, my middle son is looking forward to lunch in the cafeteria.  I think as a kindergarten student, the cafeteria held mystery and allure.  "What could be going in there with all the older kids?  Us little guys must be missing out on something good."

At our school, the only thing the little guys are missing out on is processed chicken!  The September menu reads like a Tyson product list - popcorn chicken, baked chicken patty, chicken strip sub, chicken stix, chicken nuggets, chicken parmesan sandwich.  Out of 23 days, 12 of those days some sort of chicken item is offered. 

I used to think that a chicken nugget was just a bite-sized piece of chicken, breaded and fried.  I think a lot of America thinks that as well.  I recently went shopping for a new oven and most of the newer models have a "chicken nugget button" - presets the oven to cook your nuggets perfectly!  Talk about convenient!  But a nugget is SO much more than chicken - it's actually mostly corn.

These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore's Dilemma regarding a McDonald's chicken nugget, (which is probably pretty similar to the chicken products sold to our kids at school):

"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, quasiedible 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."

Bet you never thought that was in your chicken McNuggets!  

I don't blame the school for offering this to my kids.  They have a budget to follow, and they probably make what sells, and kids LOVE processed chicken.  But parents can change this.  For one, we can pack our kids healthy meals.  I do allow both the boys to buy once a week (they usually choose pizza day).  We can also contact our government representatives and voice our concerns, demanding our kids get healthier, fresh-ingredient lunches.  I'll make it easy - sign Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution petition.  And while you're at it, show your kids his video about how chicken nuggets are made - they may never eat another nugget in their lives (let's hope!)