Boob Jobs for Chickens
The other day I was lounging on my couch watching horrible reality TV shows and they all seemed to be about breast implants!!! Like the Real Housewives of whatever city where women are obsessing about their boob jobs, and then Addicted to Beauty about MORE people addicted to plastic surgery and boob jobs, and suddenly it all just becomes too much for me to handle. I decided to turn off the tv and replace one screen with another and check my email – and what do I have in my inbox? An email about CHICKEN PLUMPING and how companies are INJECTING chickens to increase their weight! Because CLEARLY the chickens need some work done too!
This is INSANE! Apparently, companies basically “plump” chicken with salt water, seaweed extract, and chicken stock in order to INCREASE the PRICE of CHICKEN because it increases the weight!!! WTF! Not only is this completely unfair, but the gross amount of salt that they add to an otherwise healthy chicken is absolutely despicable and creating incredibly unhealthy pieces of meat! This plumping adds 700% sodium!! OMG!
This just reinforces my personal disgust for the meat industry – they are charging people to eat chickens with SALT WATER IMPLANTS!!!
In possibly uplifting *green* news, however, a UK supermarket is printing the carbon footprint on milk bottles in recogniztion of the public’s growing environmental awareness. I wonder if this will this work as well as nutrition labels…
UGH. Good job drawing a parallel between this and ‘Real Housewives.’ Both make me lose my faith in humanity.
I’m not particularly distressed by this. Essentially, the chicken processors are replicating the effects of brining the chicken, which is an ancient and honorable technique.
Would I rather pay less for the chicken, take it home and brine it myself? Yes, certainly. But I don’t think it’s gross, and I think that figure of 700% is deliberately misleading. That just means that the meat has 7 times more salt than an unseasoned, unprocessed piece of chicken. How much saltier is a potato chip than a raw potato? I bet it’s more than 700%.
I’m not being an apologist for the chicken-industrial complex; they do perpetrate a lot of horror and nastiness. I’m standing up for salt. Salt is not the enemy. Salt is what makes good things delicious.
I agree with Summer. Add salt water to poultry meat is hardly gross (unlike some other parts of poultry processing). And I believe that chicken with water content has to be labeled as such, doesn’t it?
@ladyloo – unfortunately not in the U.S., if the chickens are injected with the water and salt before they kick the bucket, the company can sell the chickens as weighty birds without having to divulge they’ve plumped the chickens with salt, water, and other unnecessary additives. After all the plumping I understand the chickens can only slither along on their bellies. Cruelty toward animals we consume seems to have become a specialty. I’m disgusted by this.
They inject the chickens while they’re alive? Ok, that is gross.
(It’s still not salt’s fault.)
Don’t get me wrong, I have a love affair with salt, and thank you Maids for pointing out what I should have made clearer.