How did our food system get to the place where chicken DNA went missing…and we didn’t notice? How is it that chicken can be injected with numerous ingredients and not be labeled in an obvious way?
For Canadians, who on average eat 30% of their meals outside of their home, it may come as a surprise that this was done intentionally, with the help of government through lax regulations/labeling laws and other food players, for 3 reasons. 1. increase profits 2. increase market share 3. create ‘craveability’…which then feeds back into the first 2 goals
The story begins long long ago, in a land far far away….
Chickens were probably domesticated, in the region now known as Thailand, at least as early as 7500 BCE. In the West, these birds were farmyard scavengers that had to hustle for every meal until the 19th-century. Mass production began in the 20th century, and much of the genetic diversity in meat chickens evaporated in favour of fast- growing breeds.
Full flavoured meat comes from animals that have led full lives. A full life means well exercised muscles and that means tougher meat. This was never a problem in the past, because ‘tough ‘ol birds’ were just simmered low and slow to soften and tenderize the meat fibres.
Today, the average life span of a meat bird is 6-8 weeks of age. This shortened life span has dramatically shifted how meat chickens are raised and cooked. In this style of agriculture, animals live are fed well, spared unnecessary exercise and killed very young. With the rise of cities during the Industrial Revolution, meat animals were confined and fattened exclusively for the urban elite who could afford such a luxury,
It used to be, up until the 19th century, that laying hens were kept until they were no longer productive (about 2-3 years) and then made their way to the soup pot. Eating animals in this way, was the last use of a resource that was more valuable to its owner, alive than dead. With the Industrial Revolution, mature birds (and other animals) began to disappear and mass production style of meat began to emerge in order to feed growing city populations and a middle class.
For a few hundred years, rural and urban meats coexisted, and inspired the development of two different styles of meat preparation: roasting for the tender, fattened meats of the wealthy, and stewing for the tough, lean meats of the poor.
With Industrialized systems, it seems that money is most often the dictating factor - the meat is expected to be produced at a minimum cost. More often, this means using cheap feed over shortened growing periods. The consequence is the sacrifice of flavour, and flavour in meat comes from fat. Birds that are grown quickly, bred for large breast size, live very little and stay fairly lean because fat (or marbling) only shows up after an animal stops growing. Animals that are raised in barns and fed grain based diets, and then harvested at an early age, create meat that is fairly dry and bland.
The problems created by mass producing meat under these conditions resulted in post market practices like ‘plumping’, ‘enhanced’, ’restructured’, ‘added value’ ‘seasoned’, ‘massaged’ ‘mechanically tenderized’. Saltwater solutions were injected into raw chicken starting as early as the 1970’s, in an attempt to address the substandard taste and texture of mass produced poultry. The saline solutions kept the meat ‘moist’ but didn’t help with the lack of flavour.
To fix that problem, other ‘natural’ additives like chicken broth, lemon concentrates, seaweed extracts, phosphates, soy, and corn syrup were added to the brines. Tumbling (aka ‘massaged’) or injection are the methods of choice for flavouring raw meat or meat that will be frozen. These flavouring agents and binders, helped the meat retain water during shipping and cooking.
In 2002, at the request of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a report was released with recommendations to help governments fight chronic disease. The battle on sodium began. To allow for ‘low sodium’ labels, sodium phosphate was replaced with potassium phosphate. Since potassium phosphate makes meat taste more bitter, even more ‘natural flavours’ were needed to hide the off taste.
Phosphate prices increased sharply in 2008-09. This prompted companies to develop a new group of ‘Actobind ingredients’ (a blend of starches and proteins) designed to increase yield, improve texture and reduce cost in raw marinated poultry, fully cooked chicken and restructured end products like nuggets and weiners. These modified starches also opened up the reach for industrial food manufacturers to move deeper into the ‘natural’ and ‘allergen-free’ markets.
The reason for adding barely pronounceable things like hydrolyzed vegetable protein, autolyzed yeast extract, disodium guanylate, and disodium inosinate to chicken products is not only to alter the taste, but more importantly, to enhance the craveability of these items. This in turn drives increases in market share. Food scientists are trained in chemistry, microbiology, engineering and nutrition. They are put to work in labs with goals like launching new ‘foods’. They must also make sure that these new items not only appeal to consumers - but that consumers will continue to crave them.
There are plant proteins that are known to break down into things like glutamic acid. This acid is the same one found in monosodium glutamate (aka MSG), as well as meats and cheeses (it is supposed to be in latter 2 items). Glutamic acid has the job of telling your brain you’re eating an energy-dense food. This sets up a chain reaction where taste bud cells join the conversation and eventually the “happy” hormone serotonin is released.
When food scientists purposefully add it to chicken, glutamate’s brain-signalling properties are being ‘hacked’. Your body is being fooled into believing it is consuming a healthy protein when, in reality, you’re really eating a ‘Franken-food’. This is only one of the ways in how the post production poultry industry attempts to fool Ontarians. There are great efforts being made so we can’t tell the difference between unadulterated chicken and modified chicken meat. In fact, trained testers are used instead of consumers to examine the exact elements of sight, smell, and taste of a new product prior to market release.
The story ends here. As long as we constantly rely on scientists to engineer the foods we buy, rely on dieticians and nutritionists to tell us what to eat, and choose to spend minimal amounts of time cooking from scratch, we will continually leave ourselves open, to easily being duped, by the conventional chicken industry. Our individual purchases over the last 50 years have collectively shaped how poultry is grown and how it is processed here in Ontario.
In 2012, 44% of Canadian agricultural output was headed for processing. By 2016, the amount of agricultural output for processing increased again to 50%. The poultry industry has it’s interests in developing broader markets, targeting specific demographic preferences and increasing profits, and this is being done by reducing the amount of chicken DNA being found in your meat and replacing it with fillers.