How McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets are actually made: Truth explained and rumors debunked McDonald’sMcNuggets are one of McDonald\u2019s most iconic items, and people have been speculating for a long time about how McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets are actually made and why they taste so good. There have been rumors circulating about McNuggets for over a decade, but we\u2019re here to dispel the fake news and give you the real truth. If you\u2019ve ever believed the rumors that McNuggets are made from pink slime, you\u2019re about to be relieved. How are McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets made? According to McDonald\u2019s website: \u201cWe start with all white-meat chicken cut from the tenderloin, breast and rib and mix it with a marinade for flavor and juiciness and to help them keep their fun shape.\u201d McNuggets are not just shaped randomly. McDonald\u2019s goes on to explain the four signature nugget shapes, \u201cOnce everything is mixed, we create the four famous Chicken McNuggets shapes\u2014bell, boot, ball, and bone. They\u2019re coated in a light tempura batter, partially fried and quickly frozen to preserve flavor. Once in our restaurants, they\u2019re fully fried and served hot to you with a delicious taste that is full of flavor.\u201d They are, of course, fried in oil before they are served to you, but so is pretty much everything at McDonald\u2019s. The good news? McDonald\u2019s fry with a mix of rapeseed and sunflower oil, just like you can buy in supermarkets. What is in McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets? McDonald\u2019s are upfront with their ingredients, too. They list that McNuggets contain: \u201cWhite Boneless Chicken, Water, Vegetable Oil (Canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil), Enriched Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Bleached Wheat Flour, Yellow Corn Flour, Vegetable Starch (Modified Corn, Wheat, Rice, Pea, Corn), Salt, Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Calcium Lactate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Spices, Yeast Extract, Lemon Juice Solids, Dextrose, Natural Flavors.\u201d This may read like a lot of scientific jargon, but dieticians have broken these ingredients down and confirmed that McDonald\u2019s uses good quality chicken meat, mostly from chicken breast, as well as binders, natural flavorings, and some secret spices that go into the batter. \u201cAll in all, eating some Chicken McNuggets every once in a while is not going to break your healthy eating pattern,\u201d Pflugradt says. \u201cMcDonald\u2019s has made many changes to their chicken nugget recipe over the years to use better quality products and meet the consumer\u2019s desires for a more natural but still tasty and low-cost convenience food.\u201d What about the infamous pink slime? A rumor circulated way back in 2011 that McDonald\u2019s used \u2018pink slime\u2019 or \u2018pink goop\u2019 in its burgers and chicken nuggets. This is not true. Pink slime was never used in McNuggets. The \u2018pink slime\u2019 in question is a byproduct known in industry as \u2018lean, finely-textured beef\u2019 which is essentially odds and ends animal product that has been treated with ammonium hydroxide to get rid of any bacteria. McDonald\u2019s did previously use this type of beef in their burgers, as did many fast food chains in the US at the time, but since 2012, they stopped using this altogether. McDonald\u2019s McNuggets did contain \u2018mechanically separated chicken parts\u2019 up until 2003, but this was swapped out for the 100% chicken breast meat used today. However, \u2018pink slime\u2019 is still used in low-cost meat products, like the hotdogs you get in jars. Did McDonald\u2019s chicken nugget recipe change? Yes, it did. Since the recipe went through major changes in 2003, it stayed pretty much the same up until 2016 when McDonald\u2019s decided to improve the nutritional value of their McNuggets. Along with a promise that all its chicken was now free of \u201cantibiotics important to human medicine,\u201d McDonald\u2019s removed some of the more questionable ingredients from the McNuggets recipe, boasting that McNuggets no longer contain artificial preservatives. McDonald\u2019s chicken does contain antibiotics, as do most fast food chains chicken, but they don\u2019t use antibiotics that are vital to humans. Chick-fil-A recently changed to the same regulation, much to the dismay of their customers. So, there you have it. When it comes to McNuggets, they really are as healthy as they can be when you consider that they are little chunks of (delicious) chicken molded into unnatural shapes and deep-fried. There\u2019s nothing nasty hiding in there, so you can dip until your heart is content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets are actually made: Truth explained and rumors debunked McDonald’sMcNuggets are one of McDonald\u2019s most iconic items, and people have been speculating for a long time about how McDonald\u2019s chicken nuggets are actually made and why they taste so good. There have been rumors circulating about McNuggets for over a decade, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}