Chicken nuggets don’t exactly enjoy a good reputation: the morsels of meat are greasy, disgusting and unhealthy, chefs and parents’ associations warn again and again. Years ago, star chef Jamie Oliver even dared an experiment to show how the nuggets are made: in front of elementary school children, he chopped up a chicken into its component parts, threw gristle and bones into a blender and made a handful of pieces of meat out of the disgusting mush. But there was no success: instead of spurning the food, the children snatched it from his hands. Children simply love the breaded meat morsels, so it is important to know which ones you can reach for with a clear conscience.
“Ökotest” bought a total of eleven chicken nugget brands from the frozen department, including four organic products, as well as nuggets from the three fast-food chains McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King. The result is mixed: The chicken nuggets from Burger King and Iglo are the worst in the test. “Insufficient” in the test result for ingredients, “insufficient” in the test result for animal welfare and transparency. The commissioned laboratory found a resistant germ in the Norma own brand. Only three organic products achieve a “good” result.
It becomes particularly unappetizing when you consider how many chickens go under the hammer for a batch of nuggets: In the case of the three “good” organic products in the test, there are around 15,000 animals from one fattener. For Rewe’s “Ja! Chicken Nuggets”, on the other hand, almost a million animals were killed in 27 fattening operations. Ökotest particularly criticizes the lack of transparency, for example, from the fast food giant Burger King. The chain was the only company in the test that did not answer the questionnaires.
If that hasn’t spoiled your appetite, here’s more: A multi-resistant germ was found in the products from “Gut Langenhof Chicken Nuggets”, a direct result of factory farming. The commissioned laboratory detected so-called ESBL-forming E. coli bacteria in the nuggets. They can destroy penicillin and modern broad-spectrum antibiotics (cephalosporins).
That leaves the three organic products: the nuggets from Netto “Bio Bio Chix! Chicken Nuggets” (7.48 euros for 500g), Edeka Bio Chicken Nuggets (9.73 euros) and “Freiländer Bio Hähnchen Golden Nuggets Biokreis” (11.08 euros) all scored “good”.
You can read the entire test at oekotest.de for a fee!
