I started writing this after reading two other posts which also talk about our animal proteins. I promise I won’t make you feel guilty about eating meat, or how this type of protein ends up on our plates. There is great news (if you are either a vegan, or vegetarian… I’m sorry), but it is bad news for us omnivores, or carnivores (no judging). If you often go to places like McDonald’s, Subway, Tim Hortons, A&W, Wendy’s, chances are you are not eating 100% meat, or precisely, CHICKEN.
Alright! We all might have heard that chicken breasts are the best kind of cut because of this and that, correct? Ignore the fact that a recent study disapproves of those for the moment. Anyway, an investigation by CBC Marketplace, you know, the place which after watching all episodes you may not want to eat anything anymore, had tested (tubes and stuff) some popular chicken sandwiches and wraps from the chains I’ve listed above and found out NONE of those contains ONLY chicken (Note from Marketplace: the tests were on meat sample alone, without sauces or condiments).
The results, except two products from Subway, averagely range from 84.9 to 89.4 percent chicken DNA with A&W topped the chart. In the case of Subway, it is both shocking and disappointing; so much that the testers had to do the second round to be sure. One product scores 53.6 percent chicken and the other scores only 42.8. Guess what mostly makes up the rest of those products? Bingo, SOY.
You can read the full article here.
This surely nauseates me. Not that I am against soy products or anything. In a matter of fact, I eat tofu a lot, the real one, not the dessert ones or the spread ones (!?). The problem is if I want to eat tofu, tempeh, or any soy-based food, I can drag myself to that Copper Branch on Ste. Catherine.
It rings a(nother) bell in me of what the heck we are eating, unlike the people in Atwood’s world where the majority of the population know/knew they are/were eating soy anyway.
Pleeblandia 
March 14, 2017 at 10:02 am
I had not heard about this story, it’s so frustrating I just want to scream. It’s amazing how all these big multinationals play us all for fools. I am not talking just about the food industry, this manipulative, profit driven deception is in almost every industry. Just two year ago Volkswagen manipulated their exhaust emission numbers in order to let the consumer believe that their vehicles are eco-friendly, when in fact they performed extremely poorly. It is my opinion that this is criminal behavior and someone needs to be held accountable.
SUBWAY ALWAYS FRESH BULL….
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March 18, 2017 at 6:40 pm
Wow, a great read. I also was completely unaware that these companies you listed are using Soy products to substitute chicken! I really don’t know how to feel about this. Firstly, I figured that the meat was not 100% what it was presented as. On the other hand, I had hoped that what they used to substitute the actual meat was only a small percentage, but it seems like it’s not! 😦
I am a big fan of Subways, but it seems like in the past few months (and now I read this article) that I am questioning whether I should continue eating there.
One last note, I don’t know if I would always want to be aware of everything that’s being put into the food I’m eating because I don’t want my food experience to be ruined lol.
In all, this was a great read because I truly didn’t realize these shocking statistics!
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March 19, 2017 at 9:01 pm
What an interesting point! Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that didn’t know about this but I think that I’m the only one that is not frustrated by it. Of course, I wish they would have told us, the consumers, that we are not in fact eating what we think we are eating. But I also think this might be a good way to reduce the amount of meat we are consuming. I am in no way a fervent Vegan trying to sell you my way of living, I enjoy meat but I also think we need to start thinking more about what we put in our plate and at what cost. Per year almost 50 billion chickens are slaughtered for our need, I don’t mind eating a bit of soy if it means saving the lives of animals.
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March 20, 2017 at 3:23 pm
this was really interesting and I didn’t know that it was that bad especially that some of these places claim that they use 100% meat! loving the humor in this blog by the way. in a sense, that is one of the upsides to Atwood`s world is that they know the products and things they`re eating. our restaurants could be lying to us or telling us the truth but we may never know unless we do research or find out ourselves through experiments and tests. this is kind of sad that we cant even trust what is in our food which is what goes into our body later on! I eat from these places and can`t believe most of it isn’t even real meat. but I think we can all agree that we were kind of expecting it especially from fast food chains. Explains why Subway`s chicken looks so fake…
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