#593 Get Nugs

The other day I was thinking of nuggets.
Like chicken nuggets, those strange amorphous pieces of fowl flesh that we have embraced in American cuisine. Like we’ve embraced that fake crab stuff—the concoction they reconstitute from bottom fish.
It’s sort of crab like, and if they add crab flavoring to it, all the better.
Somehow the idea of meat to which they have to add “meat flavor” misses the point of eating. If it were just about consuming protein, why, any wandering tofu master could render us up something passably palatable.
When you can make the tofu taste like grasshopper, Qwai Chang, it will be time for you to leave.
What got me thinking about chicken nuggets was McNuggets. I was passing by a McDonalds and my brain was reeling from a juxtaposition of signs.
I had first passed by a health club. The sign on the health club said, “Open 24 hours.” The sign I passed next door said, “McDonalds, open 24 hours.”
I suppose after a heavy aerobic workout and a light circuit of weights there’s nothing more refreshing than a Quarter-Pounder and a large fries.
Maybe top it off with a McFlurry if you did a little spin work.
Talk about taking advantage of a cross promotional sales opportunities. McDonalds benefits from hungry post-workout patrons. The health club benefits from the fat they bring back the next day.
But all this chicken consumption has a price—the antibiotic problem. Seems that one chicken farm way back determined they could increase chicken weight by force-feeding their non-range chickens antibiotics.
As a result, antibiotic resistant bacteria now thrive in chicken farms.
The bad thing is, it isn’t true. A recent study showed farmers actually lose .0093 cents per broiler chicken when they use antibiotics.
The farmers are more successful breeding bacteria that’s outpacing medicine for humans.
Before the FDA approved it for humans, a new antibiotic originally designed to fight resistant bacteria was licensed for use in poultry farms for weight gain. Chicken-bred bacteria strains have already developed resistance to it. Before humans could ever benefit.
Here’s a really scary nugget—of paranoia.
Humans dying from superbugs: Could this be cosmic karma? Factory farm chickens’ revenge?
America, ya gotta love it