Your options for lunch are limited so you make the best of a “meh” situation and go to Subway. After all, you saw an ad where that one guy lost a lot of weight. Sure, he turned out to be a creepy pervert, but he still lost that weight. Oven-roasted chicken is good, right?
Except, not all of that chicken is chicken.
A recent study commissioned in part by the CBC into the nutritional content of fast food showed that Subway’s “oven roasted chicken” was only 53.6 per cent chicken DNA. And it’s chicken strips used in such sandwiches as “sweet onion teriyaki” were only 42.8 per cent chicken DNA. The majority of the remaining DNA was Soy.
It’s not uncommon for fast food meats to have fillers and preservatives –other fast food chicken products tested from McDonalds and Wendy’s scored in the high 80’s and low 90’s– but having such a low percentage of Subway’s “chicken” being actual chicken prompted follow up tests to confirm. Food Scientist Ben Bohrer, from the University of Guelph, explains the process of Restructured Food Products used by many fast food restaurants.
Restructured products are essentially smaller pieces of meat or ground meat, bound together with other ingredients to make them last longer, taste better and, as Bohrer puts it, “add value” — restaurant speak for cheaper.
For the time being, if you’re looking for actual animal protein for lunch, you might want to eat a little less “fresh”.
Read the full story from the CBC, including tests of other fast food restaurant chicken items.
