Information on Loughborough

Checking the Chicken Nuggets

Posted on 21/09/2007
P. Klein

chicken nuggets Youve heard all the fuss about Turkey Twistlers, now the spot light is turning to Chicken Nuggets.

So if you buy some chicken nuggets, you expect that they would have a reasonable amount of chicken in them. However, by the time water, flavourings, vegetable oil and starch are added to them (and thats before the coating), you might not be eating much chicken.

Leicestershire trading standards have been out and buying portions of chicken nuggets from a variety of pub restaurants, supermarket cafes and everyones favourite after a night out " takeaways (which included a national chain). And no, they are not getting peckish during working hours " its all part of an investigation to make sure they we know and are getting what we anticipate when we hand over our money. And the results are surprising, or should that be concerning!

After the scientists had done their tests on the food that was sold to the inspectors they found that the meat content could vary from 85% at best to 45% at the bottom end of the table. Even more astonishing was that the cost of the chicken nuggets bore little or now resemblance to the proportion of chicken that was actually in the nuggets. In fact a cafe in Coalville sold some nuggets containing 85% chicken, whilst one of the worlds biggest retailers of fast-food charged an amazing £2.39 for a poultry [!] 46%.

But it gets worse, and this just might ruffle your feathers, for us poor Loughborough folk we really ought to be demanding better quality food from our outlets. Trading standards bought samples from a variety of places, including Coalville, Ashby and Loughborough areas. They then published a table of the better half of establishments, and guess what " no Loughborough company was listed, implying that at least one Loughborough company is selling chicken nuggets which have a poor amount of chicken in them.

Trading Standards are also making further investigation into some of the cases where the manufacturer had declared a higher meat content than was actually found in the product as it appears that there might have been an offence committed.

So trading standards have recently uncovered dodgy Kababs, now dodgy Chicken Nuggets " I smell a conspiracy " they are trying to make us cut down on those take aways on the way home from the pub!