So What Really Is In A McDonald's Chicken McNugget?

Eating junk food in large quantities affects our health badly. For this reason, doctors suggest supplements. The regular intakes of supplements help maintain the reduced quantity of fibers and glucosamine in human body. Another essential ingredient of diet pills ephedra is in common use by those who are extraordinarily conscious of their looks.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a fascinating book that details the changing eating habits of Americans. I can't recommend it highly enough. It explains how, over the last 30 years, we have become a nation that eats vast quantities of corn – much more so than Mexicans, the original "corn people."

Most folks assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know, for example, that a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is 56% corn?

What else is in a McDonald's Chicken McNugget? Besides corn, and to a lesser extent, chicken, The Omnivore's Dilemma describes all of the thirty-eight ingredients that make up a McNugget – one of which I'll bet you'll never guess. During this part of the book, the author has just ordered a meal from McDonald’s with his family and taken one of the flyers available at McDonald’s called "A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts: Choose the Best Meal for You."  These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma: 

“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!

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Comments

[The Guy who likes chicken]

If we consider your analogy we can say that everything you are eating in the chicken McNugget is in fact corn. Why? Because the main diet of chicken is corn.

Simple as that

[Visible]

Shocking !

[Dexx]

omg... r u serious??!

[Rus]

and I think I've just found the reason to never let my kids have McDonalds. Surely a smaller person would be more effected by this? Also would it stay in the bloodstream or is in straight in/straight out?

[mirjan]

Inaccurate.

You can't state that TBHQ is lighter fuel. It's an antioxidant and not even a very good one. But hey it's cheap and so you all can have your McNuggets a bit cheaper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TBHQ

greets, food scientist

[swape]

mmmm .... acids and lighter gas.... Can you guess what kind of people likes sniffin' lighter fluids and stuff?

Yes... drug addicts and junkies... and thats whom MCDonalds are aiming for ? ..... or?

[jeffrey gato]

He Who dines beneath "Golden Arches" is soon to pass through "Pearly Gates"

[Paul H Docherty]

I'm not surprised that a McNugget is full of junk (this McDonalds, after all) - most fast food is. However, TBHQ is NOT IN ANY WAY a form of butane, no more than any other hydrocarbon. In a lot of respects, it's more like the steroids that your body make by itself. In fact, a quick Wikipedia search shows that the structures of these compounds are barely related.

It's also worth considering the toxicology data; the official values can be found here through a search on InChem.com

which show safe usage in dogs at 75mg/kg - and this is used to set a safe human use value of 1% of that. Those are pretty safe guidelines. Also, bear in mind that simple salt can kill in excess (20g can kill a child)

Please don't spread scientific scare-stories when you don't have even the slightest clue about it...

Paul Docherty (MChem, BSc., Ph. D student in Chemistry, Oxford University)

[Goat]

To be safe, you probably shouldn't eat more than 5 grams of chicken nuggets.

They should write, "do not eat," on the packaging so people don't get sick.

[john duh]

shouldn't you be chasing abulances? we know fast food is bad - what's your story? sue them all 'in the name of justice'?

[Jesse Wheeler]

Just another reason to prepare meals at home and avoid the unhealthy (and combustable!) alternatives of fat food.

--
Cooking Healthy, Cooking for Life, Cooking for You!
http://cooking4health.com

[Bob]

Mmmmm, Corn

[Linson Chan]

ohhh........... so thats why nuggets are sooo delicious, it will burn you inside out... :) hehehheh, i find Jollibee food chain far better in terms of food quality and taste.....
//
LINSON CHAN
09198774095

Going through the Mc Donald’s nutrition facts sheet I did not see TBHQ, but the substance THBQ which is found in canola oil so,,, in reality they are not spraying lighter fluid on the chicken or any other food. I think somebody needs to clearly go over the menu again.

[Les Dabney]

Class action lawsuit in 3, 2, 1....

[Rod]

Oh crap, I just ate some nuggets last night!

You're like one of those idiots that whines about margarine because it's "one molecule away from plastic, OMG!"

The oxygen you breathe is ONE ATOM AWAY FROM WATER, OMGZ, DON'T DROWNZZ IN TEH AIRE!

Da da da da da....I'me lightin' it!

[m0ose]

Damn dude, great article, but holy hell. That is amazingly bad. I wonder though, do you happen to know if those trace amounts of TBHQ can cause any sort of reaction. Sometimes when I eat nuggets, I get a headache or feel like I am going to throw up.

[Phanatic]

ccording to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid)

Well, no, it's not. That's absolutely incorrect.

Butane is a four-carbon alkane, CH3CH2CH2CH3. TBHQ is a phenol. Phenols are not forms of alkanes. Al Nye the lawyer guy might want to talk to a chemist guy before posting misinformation.

Saying that TBHQ is a form of capsaicin would be more accurate than saying it's a form of lighter fluid. It's still wrong, but at least TBHQ and capsaicin are both phenols. But that wouldn't sound as scary.

Al Nye the lawyer guy might want to talk to a chemist guy before posting misinformation.

[Peter Olson]

> According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food
> Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter
> fluid)

This is like saying sugar is a form of water because it contains hydrogen and oxygen. The link to butane is a minor part of the molecule, which is otherwise nothing resembling lighter fluid.

http://www.answers.com/topic/tert-butylhydroquinone

"tert-Butylhydroquinone (TBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, or 2-(1,1-dimethylethyl)-1,4-benzenediol) is an aromatic organic compound which is a type of phenol. It is a derivative of hydroquinone, substituted with tert-butyl group."

I guess saying that is a hydroquinone wouldn't be as frightening to the average consumer as saying it is a form of butane. It's basic fear-mongering, and shows that the Consumers Guide is either ignorant or intentionally deceptive. Either one is not a good recommendation for that book.

The link goes on to explain what is known about the health hazards of this chemical.

[Bob Rasmus]

Wow! Thanks for sharing this information. I hope many consumers read this and get back to buying bananas, strawberries, and the like for their health.

[Sanders]

Among the reasons that drove me to be a vegetarian, the most powerfull one was distrust of modern food processing techniques and modern additives on the meat.

[malice to dream]

Wow, i could have never xpected that from MCdonalds. It just goes to show how un-aware the general public is about what they eat. Have we all seen the commercials with the little kids eating the mcnugget meals as the healthy alternative,lol. I guess if you are eating at mcdonalds you arent to into eating healthy either way so knowing wouldnt change your mind that much.

[kingofmongolia]

so THATS why they are so addictive
i thought they were 25% cocaine