Chicken nuggets to be processed in China

[mmntech]

I don't think this really changes anything. It's very well known that processed food is not good for you. If you eat any food made in a factory, you really can't be sure where it came from or even what's in it. They already use fillers, especially for "diet" foods.

Unfortunately, this is the sobering reality of North America's "always lowest prices, always" mentality. We want food that is both cheap and convenient. Cooking is too hard. We'd rather just heat up a bunch embalmed chicken meat in the oven and call it a night. Or just go to the McDick's drive thru when even that gets too hard.

It's not really cheaper to eat process food. Though that's the perception. People expect the lowest price. Production costs have risen here in North America. Unionized factory workers expect benefits and a life long pension, which are the two biggest expenses since you're basically paying to support non-productive workers. With the expectation of perpetual profit growth, companies just move the factory to places where workers can be paid peanuts, and get no benefits. So American jobs get lost. Not that it matters because many people here refuse to work in meat packing plants. It's a dirty, smelly, and nasty job.

It really is a vicious cycle. North Americans would rather stuff their faces with cheap foreign made junk food than pay more to produce it domestically. Or pay the same to do their own cooking.

 

[Craig234]

Another Government mess up. Nothing to see here. It amazes me that it is cheaper for them to send it to China and back and still be cheaper than here in the US. I guess regulations here cost a small fortune.

Maybe we will see "Made in USA" on future chicken packaging lol

You're ignoring wages to blame 'regulation'.

Second, regulation for food processing is there for a good reason.

 

[Craig234]

This is what happens when fast-food workers want 15 bucks an hour.

Wrong.

They serve the food, not process it. But the processors should be paid well also.

 

[Howard]

This is what happens when fast-food workers want 15 bucks an hour.

*newspaper-reading guy meme pic*

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm surprised that people who eat cheap processed chicken nuggets are bothered by how healthy they are no matter where they come from.

 

[WelshBloke]

Thinking about it I don't understand. In what state are the chickens being shipped? Have they been killed, plucked and deboned? Or is the deboning going to happen in China?

It seems if they were just shipping the boneless chicken then there is minimal labor involved in making nuggets. Just put it in a machine that chops it and mixes it with ingredients and shapes it. Then a coating of breading and deep frying. All that is pretty much without human labor.

I can understand this if they have to manually debone the chicken, but I figure the breasts are a premium product and not used in the nuggets. So, are they going to sell the breasts in China or ship the raw breasts back to the US?

Are ingredients like cooking oil and breading cheaper in China?

I really wish the story gave more info.

I think that you have a very optimistic view about what goes in a chicken nugget.

 

[Juddog]

It is becoming nearly economically impossible for many Americans to avoid Chinese made food products.

People can say just don't eat any of this or that, but the Chinese food products are everywhere and in very many things.

Going back to honey:
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/#.Uie04J3D9fM

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey

Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.”

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.

Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 jars, jugs and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

The contents were analyzed for pollen by Vaughn Bryant, a professor at Texas A&M University and one of the nation’s premier melissopalynologists, or investigators of pollen in honey.

Bryant, who is director of the Palynology Research Laboratory, found that among the containers of honey provided by Food Safety News:

•76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

•100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

•77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

•100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.

This is why I literally only buy honey from people in my area that collect it from their own bee hives. I have to pay a bit more, but I know the crap in the major stores only has a 50/50 chance of being real honey.

 

[BladeVenom]

they burn the lowest grade available. it's barely above road asphalt.

so, not 9, but not more than a couple dozen.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution

16 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html

 

[Phoenix86]

It's chicken nuggets, there's no chicken in them and they're disgusting anyway. What's liable to change exactly?

You don't really want to know the answer to that. Despite how bad you may think it is now, it CAN get worse.

 

[Juddog]

You don't really want to know the answer to that. Despite how bad you may think it is now, it CAN get worse.

Worse than reprocessed pink slime? The only thing I can think of that would be worse is a big pile of that mood slime from Ghostbusters 2.

 

[Phoenix86]

Worse than reprocessed pink slime? The only thing I can think of that would be worse is a big pile of that mood slime from Ghostbusters 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Worse.

edit:
By November 2008, China reported an estimated 300,000 victims,[1] with six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and an estimated 54,000 babies being hospitalised.[2][3] The chemical appeared to have been added to milk to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content. In a separate incident four years before, watered-down milk had resulted in 13 infant deaths from malnutrition.

As of July 2010, Chinese authorities were still reporting some seizures of melamine-contaminated dairy product in some provinces, though it was unclear whether these new contaminations constituted wholly new adulterations or were the result of illegal reuse of material from the 2008 adulterations.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Worse than reprocessed pink slime? The only thing I can think of that would be worse is a big pile of that mood slime from Ghostbusters 2.

People keep calling it pink slime, but I think it resembles soft serve ice cream more than slime. It really doesn't look disgusting at all. It's just the amorphous, unidentifiable "stuff" that we know ends up being chicken Mcnuggets. The whole horror factor of it consists entirely of it not looking like chicken before it is formed into food. It IS chicken though, just ground up and made into a paste. It doesn't bother me any more than knowing that hotdogs are made of ground up leavings of who knows what, and have been since time immemorial.

I'm not a big fan of chicken nuggets really, but this whole "pink slime" scandal has had me baffled for a while now.

 

[akahoovy]

People keep calling it pink slime, but I think it resembles soft serve ice cream more than slime. It really doesn't look disgusting at all. It's just the amorphous, unidentifiable "stuff" that we know ends up being chicken Mcnuggets. The whole horror factor of it consists entirely of it not looking like chicken before it is formed into food. It IS chicken though, just ground up and made into a paste. It doesn't bother me any more than knowing that hotdogs are made of ground up leavings of who knows what, and have been since time immemorial.

I'm not a big fan of chicken nuggets really, but this whole "pink slime" scandal has had me baffled for a while now.

I think it's because pink slime parts have been washed with ammonia, where they may have been previously unclean and then added back for processing.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I wonder how this will affect Canada, I know pink slime is illegal here so I don't even think nuggets from the US would pass here.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Don't eat any "processed" chicken.

Don't give a shit.

Problem not found.

Problem not found until your new Chinese overlords have a tank parked on your lawn.
This is just phase 3 or something. Take over the food supply.

 

[John Connor]

Two words: Fuck China!

 

[WelshBloke]

Problem not found until your new Chinese overlords have a tank parked on your lawn.
This is just phase 3 or something. Take over the food supply.

Why the hell would they do that? They make more money out of you this way without any of the hassle.

 

[Broheim]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Worse.

edit:
By November 2008, China reported an estimated 300,000 victims,[1] with six infants dying from kidney stones and other kidney damage, and an estimated 54,000 babies being hospitalised.[2][3] The chemical appeared to have been added to milk to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content. In a separate incident four years before, watered-down milk had resulted in 13 infant deaths from malnutrition.

As of July 2010, Chinese authorities were still reporting some seizures of melamine-contaminated dairy product in some provinces, though it was unclear whether these new contaminations constituted wholly new adulterations or were the result of illegal reuse of material from the 2008 adulterations.

which is great news for Denmark, Arla is expanding their export business for danish milk in China and the Chinese are ready to pay a huge premium for it, they don't trust their domestically produced food any more than we do.

 

[WelshBloke]

which is great news for Denmark, Arla is expanding their export business for danish milk in China and the Chinese are ready to pay a huge premium for it, they don't trust their domestically produced food any more than we do.

Yeah, we had a problem of Chinese people buying up all the available baby milk in the UK and sending it overseas. Does nobody breastfeed in China? It would seem to make sense as they can't trust the artificial milk and they don't have loads of kids.

 

[BUTCH1]

It's chicken nuggets, there's no chicken in them and they're disgusting anyway. What's liable to change exactly?

Yes, there is chicken in nuggets, did you think it was sawdust? problem is the Chinese track record for handling anything related to food is shockingly bad, this will only cause the sale of any nugget to fail, miserably..

 

[WelshBloke]

Yes, there is chicken in nuggets, did you think it was sawdust? problem is the Chinese track record for handling anything related to food is shockingly bad, this will only cause the sale of any nugget to fail, miserably..

Equal parts chicken and sawdust?

The track record of highly processed food production the world over is pretty shit.

People who eat cheap chicken nuggets either don't care or don't know how they are made. Why should that change if they come from China?

 

[Broheim]

Yeah, we had a problem of Chinese people buying up all the available baby milk in the UK and sending it overseas. Does nobody breastfeed in China? It would seem to make sense as they can't trust the artificial milk and they don't have loads of kids.

I'd guess some don't trust the food they eat enough for it to be safe to breastfeed, others simply can't breastfeed (diet might be a reason why), when you've got a population like China it doesn't take a large percentage to do something before the demand skyrockets. Just means more money for western companies that can market premium western items in the Chinese market.

 

[WelshBloke]

I'd guess some don't trust the food they eat enough for it to be safe to breastfeed, others simply can't breastfeed (diet might be a reason why), when you've got a population like China it doesn't take a large percentage to do something before the demand skyrockets. Just means more money for western companies that can market premium western items in the Chinese market.

I guess. It's just that baby milk isn't that cheap in the first place. If you can afford to buy it in Europe and ship it half way round the world you can probably afford a decent diet in the first place.
I was under the impression that it was more of a middle class thing than a poor starving peasant thing.

 

[compuwiz1]

Chicken Nuggets have always been processed food, whether it be McD's or anyone's. I don't choose to put that shit in my body....evar, nor should you. You have a choice. If you're looking to save a few cents, a bean burrito from Taco Bell is a better choice, but it's still like eating shit....just better shit, but in the end, it's all shit.

 

[Murloc]

I'd guess some don't trust the food they eat enough for it to be safe to breastfeed, others simply can't breastfeed (diet might be a reason why), when you've got a population like China it doesn't take a large percentage to do something before the demand skyrockets. Just means more money for western companies that can market premium western items in the Chinese market.

I guess. It's just that baby milk isn't that cheap in the first place. If you can afford to buy it in Europe and ship it half way round the world you can probably afford a decent diet in the first place.
I was under the impression that it was more of a middle class thing than a poor starving peasant thing.

I think that maybe it's because third-worlders are in a cultural phase that passed decades ago in Europe, where breast-feeding is animal and for poor people, while if you can afford baby milk, you're rich and better. Europe shifted back to the natural-is-better mentality completely now but maybe they didn't.