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DNA Test Shows Subway's 'Chicken' Only Contains 50 Percent Chicken (arstechnica.com)
According to an investigation by Canadian media outlet, CBC, the chicken in Subway Restaurants' chicken sandwiches may only contain around 50 percent chicken -- the rest of it is soy, spices and preservatives. The investigation involved DNA testing chicken sandwiches collected from five popular fast food restaurants. While the rest of the sandwiches contained mostly chicken, Subway's oven-roasted chicken and the chicken strips in its Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich clocked in with just 53.6 percent and 42.8 percent chicken, respectively. Ars Technica reports: Among all the chicken sampled, there was a total of about 50 ingredients other than chicken identified. The chicken samples had an average of 16 ingredients. Some of the ingredients are expected, such as salt and other seasonings. But many were commercial preservatives and fillers. One commonality was that they all had high levels of salt. Subway responded to the CBC in a statement: "SUBWAY Canada cannot confirm the veracity of the results of the lab testing you had conducted. However, we are concerned by the alleged findings you had conducted." You can read the full statement here.
The companies in question - Wendy's, Subway, McDonalds, Tim Horton's - responded HERE.
Their responses sound reasonable, so either they are lying or the "DNA tests" are not accurate.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It is impossible to get any processed food that is not laden with salt and sugar. It contributes to high blood pressure and diabetes. Do the food companies care? Or will shipping "product" take precedence over their customers' health?
Piffle! That's a totally wrong spin! According to TFA, most of the other 50% is soy — the famously humane and environment-friendly replacement for meat.
Restaurants should proudly admit to being ahead of their customers on both counts — and wow to make their sandwiches 90% meat-free by 2050, or something like that.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This means that people who would not touch soy products, people who think tofu is disgusting but have never tried it, people who would never order a product called Subway Soy Chicken Sandwich, or Yum Yum Soy Meat-O Chicken Sandwich, have been eating soy product for some time and not caring. Let us all reflect on this valuable lesson about the value of Soy products and how they can provide a delicious and affordable source of protein to millions of people. J Edgar Hoover Subway Corporation
They obviously used alternative chickens, duh!
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Yes, read the response, but like all communications from large companies, you have to read it critically
For example, from the end of Subway's response:
We will look into this again with our supplier to ensure that the chicken is meeting the high standard we set for all of our menu items and ingredients.
Translate this into normal english and it is "We do not adequately QA our supply chain & our lowest-bid supplier is giving us a chicken/soy blend. We only care about this because we just got caught out"
My pics.
I enjoy meat myself - but accept that the meat industry is historically filled with some of the worst intentions on the face of the planet. There's a reason that one of the big counters to libertarian philosophy is historical regulation of the meat industry... if they can get away with it, you'd better believe that the industry is going to break just about every rule, custom, ethical guideline and concept of decent human interaction possible.
Meat, it ain't pretty, it's rarely pure (the fish industry is nigh-hilarious with how it labels things), but it's still an important part of our filthy culture.
Cutting a 50% mix of soy into chicken isn't shocking compared to most things - and actually matches what I remember of that particular flavor whenever I decided to try chicken again at Subway. Now that I've gotten better at cooking for myself, I find a $6 footlong to be actually a fairly expensive sandwich.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go make a nice couple of egg/bacon/veggie sandwiches. I'm sure it's not completely ethical, and likely contains some genetic engineering (ooh, scary), but for the price, it's a marvel of modern industry and flavor!
Ryan Fenton
Right. I love the one that admits they use 1% soy and still flexes the "made from 100% chicken" line, which is technically true of anything containing even a scrap of real chicken, and it's clear from the context they're relying on this technical interpretation.
They just need to market it better.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have cut up a lot of chickens. Never seen any chicken parts that look remotely like Subways. Clearly extruded food, like a chicken 'nugget'.
McDonald's and Wendy's claim to be serving 'chicken breasts'. I don't eat McShits, but the Chicken at Wendy's does look like an actual chicken breast, just a very small one.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We recognize that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so our imitation chicken is leading us all into a new, more courageous* future, where we will be 100%, BRAVE, not CHICKEN!
"courageous" is the intellectual property of Apple Inc. "chicken" includes, but is not limited to, dog, cat, yeast, nuclear waste, chicken feathers, beaks, claws, recycled newspaper (for that genuine cardboard-y takeout taste).May include nuts. May not include chicken..
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
FAKE NEWS!
Of course it's fake news. It's about fake chicken!!!.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Obviously you didn't read the article OR watch the show. They explain their methodology and you can clearly see how fake the Subway chicken looks. They also re-did the Subway test to make sure it wasn't an anomaly, buying another bunch of take-outs and having them tested as well.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"However, we are concerned by the alleged findings you had conducted."
Is that even a sentence? The findings are not alleged, they are real. You get to say a guy was allegedly killed with an alleged bullet. You can say the alleged killer is Whatsisname because that hasn't been proven. However if a lab signs off on a DNA analysis I can say it's real all I want - if it turns out that it's not then the LAB is in trouble, not me, because the lab certified the results.
And you don't "conduct findings". Wow, I'm worried that Subway let the junior PR person handle this.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well, I'm personally relieved. I wouldn't want anything that was made with some percentage of unreal chicken.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A better study would report total protein and attempt to assay proteins and marker entities to distinguish from chicken vs other animal vs soy.
Of course, the analytical costs on the second part would be higher.
If the report is true, it might give new meaning and range to the phrase, "rubber chicken"
I remember this same thing happening to Taco Bell. The problem is that chicken meat is already 60-80 percent water, where as everything else is dry ingredients. If the dry ingredients absorb moisture from the chicken does the percentage drop? What exactly are they measuring?
It came off as sarcastic, not trolly to me.
Don't you see what's really happening here? SUBWAY has managed hybridize chickens with soy and other plants for spices! Now I know that I am living in the future! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So what is the other 50%?
The article seems ambiguous on this point at best.
I find it hard to believe that the whole other 50% was just salt and spices, not least because of how bland Subway chicken actually is.
CBC is not a "media outlet". It is Canada's national broadcaster. And it does a damned good job on its news and public affairs, routinely shaming the US networks with its national and international coverage.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Why did the Chicken cross the Road?
To get to the Subway.
But they only made it 50% of the time, it seems.
eating subway. Lots of folks can't handle processed soy protein.
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I remember watching a Subway commercial years ago where Jared was comparing their chicken sandwich to KFC's. He said that they used "real" chicken. So I decided to buy a chicken sub just to confirm what I already know. Their chicken was just a gaint chicken nugget. If KFC is fake there's more convincing.
There's supposed to be chicken in there?
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Subway several years ago has been discovered adding some rubber filaments to the bread.
Now they say that the meat is only 50% meat.
Probably they need to beef up those margins.
Salt, sugar, water, and the various other chemical additives don't have DNA. The article is about % DNA. So it's actually worse than one might think. Brine + chicken would come out as 100% chicken. Decent chicken should be 90% even when seasoned and that's close to what a few of the manufacturers actually had. The 43.5% on subway strips should be criminal.
"DNA Test Shows Subway's 'Chicken' Only Contains 50 Percent Chicken"
I'm surprised it contained any chicken at all, frankly.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I prefer chicken with 50% soy rather than 100% chicken packed with chicken fat, skin, feathers, and bowels.
It could have been worse, e.g. soylent green.
Is it me, or does it seem like you are getting mostly bread and paying more for it? Don't get me wrong. The other sub making sandwich companies are many times worse than Subway, those guys empty your wallet and fail to fill your stomach. With their "fancy name, or appearance" sub sandwiches.
I eat vegetables in my sub that I hardly eat otherwise? And no it's not just lettuce.
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Unreal Chicken. Isn't that the code name for the upcoming flavor based interface for the Unreal Engine?
Why is Snark Required?
It is the law, but only in New York City. Not even the State, AFAIK.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Subway is the cheapest lunch you can get in many markets - often cheaper than McDonald's on a calories-per-dollar metric. Soy is cheap volume filler and salt makes the flavor more apparent while doubling as an exceptionally cheap preservative. Corporate is doing everything they can to pay their employees as little as possible - while taking as much as possible from the franchisees - and they found this is another way to improve the margin.
After all they didn't surpass the expansion rate of McDonald's by relentlessly pursuing quality or the propagation of a healthy product.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Most restaurants that sell sandwiches are primarily trying to sell you a very large hunk of bread with as little protein as possible. It's not just sub shops, it's anywhere.
I went low carb for a couple of years and one of the shocking things was ordering sandwiches and even hamburgers and finding out that there was very little meat inside. I often had to order two sandwich items to get enough food to not feel extremely hungry.
One of the few places where I don't feel like I'm just being fed bread is Potbelly if you order one of their "flats". These are some kind of flat bread which is quite thin. I suppose other chains may have something similar. I still often order it with double meat if there's some question what and when dinner will be.
At Jimmy John's you can get a lettuce wrap, which is kind of messy but serviceable. I prefer a hot sandwich, though, and I don't know of anyplace that will do a hot lettuce wrap.
New Subway spokesweasel Kellyanne Conway says that Subway is just offering "alternative chicken".
DNA testing cannot possibly be quantitatively correlated to the mass ratio content of any sampled substance. i'm not saying its all chicken, just that the test is irrelevant. and salt has no DNA.
Is it me, or does it seem like you are getting mostly bread and paying more for it? Don't get me wrong. The other sub making sandwich companies are many times worse than Subway, those guys empty your wallet and fail to fill your stomach. With their "fancy name, or appearance" sub sandwiches.
I eat subway maybe once a week and load up on all of the vegetables. The $6 footlong deal with carved turkey and all the veggies is two meals. I consider it a decent deal.
First time I recall seeing a story linked by both Slashdot and the Drudge Report. But now I know why I only tried that bland slab they call chicken once.
Seriously, the fact that a chemical is used in both bread and yoga mats says precisely zero about how healthy or toxic it is.
While that's true, it is an unnecessary chemical which might occasionally be harmful and sometimes companies mess up measuring or mixing and someone gets a whole load of an ingredient, it doesn't get converted in the production process, etc. So while odds are nobody has actually been harmed by it, it's still dumb to use it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Their QA is probably working just fine. They probably actually SPECIFIED the formula that was uncovered by the DNA tests, in order to cut costs.
The chicken at Wendy's is real chicken. The reason it's not 100% is if you have the breading on it (crispy style), the seasonings, etc. You just can't mix up chicken with soy in a blender and have the outcome resemble chicken with the same texture. I don't think it's that small either at Wendy's, too much of it hangs out the side of the buns.
Low carbing is a real education in what food is really made of.
I don't know about the US but at least in the UK the labelling is fairly sane, as far as I know.
Well, as long as the non-chicken animal content is zero percent ...
They are all saying they made their stuff from 100% chicken, but do not disclose the proportion of chicken versus the rest. For all you know , it could be 49% wheat protein 50% chicken breast , and 1% seasoning and they could still state the truth !
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Right. I love the one that admits they use 1% soy and still flexes the "made from 100% chicken" line, which is technically true of anything containing even a scrap of real chicken, and it's clear from the context they're relying on this technical interpretation.
It's the same thing that lets McDonalds say their burgers are made from "100% beef", well yes, in the sense that a cow's arsehole is beef.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Turkey is fine if you coat it in breadcrumbs or batter and fry it in butter, but then so is almost anything else, including courgettes and Mars Bars.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Subway supplies the recipe. The "chicken" strips are indeed far from what you would call chicken. Most of the actual chicken product is ground skin, fat, gristle and bone. Can't say why I know, but I wouldn't eat it.
It tastes bad too. Between the yoga-mat plastic in the bread and the chance of getting intestinal sickness it is on my avoid list....
love is just extroverted narcissism
Fake fake chicken news?
They're not as small as some. But not as big as the good frozen chicken breasts at the grocery store. Roughly like the super cheapies, I've never seen a chicken breast as small as a Carl's Jr one in the store, and they charge a super premium price for their non-fried chicken sandwiches.
At least they are chicken.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Go to an actual Deli and order a sandwich instead of subway...you'll get 2-3x the meat, far less bread, and better quality (often fresh sliced) meat. Oh, and it will cost about the same too.
For sandwiches I'm still at a loss as to why people go to subway other than the bread smell.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Going to an actual deli isn't always a very viable option because they're not that common, at least around here.
Subway is awful, but I think a lot of people see it as a fresh alternative to greasy fast food. And it mostly is if you stick to cold cuts and vegetables. It's all low quality no matter what.
And their awfulness has insured they have a ton of competitors, Jimmy Johns, Whichwich, Potbelly, and probably others, too.
I went through a phase where I tried to really reduce animal protein form my diet, and one of the most foul things I ever tasted in the attempt was "Chick'n", some plant-based product that was supposed to look and taste like chicken. I couldn't even stomach a single bite. I spit it strait out and insulted several deities.
If Subway really is serving a product that's 50% soy (or whatever), and people eat it without thinking it's not 100% chicken - wow. Not bad. Not bad at all.