Chicken McNuggets (introduced in 1983 with support from the McNugget Mania campaign) are a product offered by international fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's consisting of small pieces of processed chicken meat that have been battered and deep fried.
Chicken McNuggets are one of the most popular trademarked items on the McDonald's menu.
In a 2002 lawsuit against McDonald's, Judge Robert Sweet commented that Chicken McNuggets are a "McFrankenstein" creation. The judge identified
that rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan, McNuggets included elements not utilized by the home cook, including the unusual sounding ingredients like: extracts of rosemary, vitamins (niacin, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), leavening (baking soda, calcium lactate, etc.).
The 2004 documentary Super Size Me states that "[o]riginally created from old chickens that can no longer lay eggs, McNuggets are now made from chickens with unusually large breasts. They're stripped from the bone, and ground-up into a sort of 'chicken mash', which is then combined with all sorts of stabilizers and preservatives, pressed into familiar shapes, breaded, deep-fried, freeze-dried, and then shipped to a McDonald's near you". Super Size Me also alleged inclusion of chemicals such as tertiary butylhydroquinone (a phenolic antioxidant used as a chemical preservative), polydimethylsiloxane (an anti-foaming agent), and other ingredients not used by a typical home cook. This was recently restated by CNN. Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of What to Eat, says the tertiary butylhydroquinone and dimethylpolysiloxane in McNuggets probably pose no health risks. As a general rule, though, she advocates not eating any food with an ingredient you can’t pronounce.
As of October 9, 2010, dimethylpolysiloxane and Tert-Butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) are listed as ingredients in the McNuggets cooking process. According to Lisa McComb, a media relations representative for McDonald's, dimethylpolysiloxane is used as a matter of safety to keep the frying oil from foaming. The chemical is a form of silicone also used in cosmetics and Silly Putty. A review of animal studies by the World Health Organization found no adverse health effects associated with dimethylpolysiloxane. TBHQ is a common preservative for vegetable oils, cereals, nuts, cookies, chips, and animal fats, found in other foods like Girl Scout Cookies and Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sets an upper limit of 0.02% (0.0002) of the oil or fat content in foods, which like other foods, applies to the oil used in McNuggets. Effective use of TBHQ is 1 gram per 5000 grams of cooking oil (1 gram per 11 pounds of cooking oil). One gram (one-thirtieth of an ounce) can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse", according to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives. Application to the skin may cause allergic reactions and industrial workers exposed to the vapors suffered clouding of the eye lens, without other obvious systemic effects.*
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