Chicken Nuggets Study Reveals Meat Not Predominant Component

A chicken nuggets study was conducted by researchers from Mississippi recently to determine the composition of chicken nuggets from two unnamed fast food chains. The results were discomfiting.

Chicken nuggets

The researchers found out that the chicken nuggets they examined were "mostly fat."

The first nugget "was composed of approximately 50% skeletal muscle, with the remainder composed primarily of fat, with some blood  vessels and nerve present," according to lead author  Dr. Richard D. deShazo of the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

The nugget from the second restaurant "was only 40 percent muscle, and the remainder was fat, cartilage and pieces of bone," he added.

In conclusion, the researchers said that "striated muscle (chicken meat) was not the predominate component in either nugget."

They further stated that "fat was present in equal or greater quantities along with epithelium, bone, nerve, and connective tissue."

The results of the study were published in the September issue of the American Journal of Medicine.