What's in that Chicken McNugget? Do you really want to know?

This is what I’ve been kvetching about: Food products rather than food. Frankenfood. Factory food. Is this really what your kids should be eating?

This is from ‘Eat This, Not That’:

You’d think that a breaded lump of chicken would be pretty simple. Mostly, it would contain bread and chicken. But the McNugget and its peers at other fast-food restaurants are much more complicated creatures than that. The “meat” in the McNugget alone contains seven ingredients, some of which are made up of yet more ingredients. (Nope, it’s not just chicken. It’s also such nonchicken-related stuff as water, wheat starch, dextrose, safflower oil, and sodium phosphates.) The “meat” also contains something called “autolyzed yeast extract.” Then add another 20 ingredients that make up the breading, and you have the industrial chemical—I mean, fast-food meal—called the McNugget. Still, McDonald’s is practically all-natural compared to Wendy’s Chicken Nuggets, with 30 ingredients, and Burger King Chicken Fries, with a whopping 35 ingredients.

It's a jungle out there: Eating healthy while traveling

I’m leaving for a week in my balmy homestate of Florida on Tuesday. Florida - even in February - gives me a case of the heebie-jeebies, or at least ambivilance. It’s the biggest old folks home without walls in the world, over in the Ft. Meyers area were we’ll be staying with my sister-in-law.

I wouldn’t care if I could go kayaking, fishing for the wiley snook down in the Ten Thousand Islands, dine at Columbia or hit the Ringling Museum of Art. Some of that may be possible - not the fishing, since I’m the only one who enjoys that - but it’s the land of the early bird special. AKA regrettable food.

Click to read more ...