Why? It's all in the name. My friend the chef chemically separates meat from
chicken carcasses because he hasn't got time to pick at them nor can afford to
waste them. He does this by the refined and very advanced technique of boiling
them in salted water to make stock and soup. :-)
I could be pedantic (who, me?) and point out that removing meat from the bone
with a knife is 'mechanical'. So is ripping it off by hand, in some sense.
I seem to remember that mechanical separation of chicken is done on carcasses
after the breast and leg/thigh sections have been sliced off. I understood that
some sort of centrifuging was involved. Because a lot of small bones like ribs
are still in there, it is then converted to a paste and cooked to
'manufactured' meat found in chicken nuggets, sausages, sandwich loaf and so
on. I'd suggest that this product is possibly more healthy than regular chicken
from a fast food joint because (with the exception of nuggets) it often hasn't
been coated in batter and deep fried. It also contains proportions of bone and
bone marrow which are quite healthy products (ask any dog) and high in calcium.
Of course, like any minced product it requires some preservative because they
go bad quickly - the processing heats it slightly and the surface area is
immense. And of course it tastes foul. But it isn't necessarily any worse for
you than many other forms of meat, could be healthier in some ways and does
recover material that would otherwise be wasted or devalued as animal feed.
You are just responding squeamishly to the industrial style nomenclature.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 05/01/2011, at 1:06 AM, John Hermanson wrote:
> Speaking of fast food, have you ever read about "mechanically separated"
> chicken used in some chicken nuggets? MacDonalds doesn't do this, but
> this type of "food" should be illegal.
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|