The headline got me sorta terrified, imagining what sort of repugnant, monstrous creature was being grinded and mixed into my Subway sandwich. Good to know at least it's just soy.
Not good for low-carb/keto eaters. Soy has carbs, chicken doesn't.
There has been some discussion regarding subway and carbs in the chicken, because their nutrition shows far fewer than some app trackers do. If it's 50%, that's a serious level of carbs, and makes Subway not an option.
I also wonder where the DNA ends up when the soy protein is extracted. DNA is naturally bound to proteins, amnd I don't know if that bond is broken in the extraction process. If it isn't, the concentration of DNA in soy protein would be much higher than in soy beans, so there is a real possibility that 1% soy protein in the patty equates to 50% soy DNA in the whole DNA.
That also means the title overstates the case. It can only confidently make a statement about the fraction of chicken DNA, and adding the weasel word "may" to an unsound conclusion makes it unscientific in my opinion.
Subway has nutritional information on line. They claim that a regular chicken sandwich has 45g carbs so if that's false advertising I think their customers could have solid grounds for a class-action lawsuit.
Me too. But as for Subway, I find so little actual meat (and/or cheese) in any of their sandwiches, I never go there even though I'm bombarded with coupons from them.
I order the burger as is, because I don't want to annoy the waiter or the cook, or me. I also don't eat the lettuce or the pickle, if they happen to come with. I'm not going to go down the list of what I will or won't accept for a burger and a 30 minute relationship.
That you are incredibly wasteful if you throw away 50% of the calories you buy. Go to a place that sells a naked burger without lettuce if that's what you want.
It's not trying again if you keep changing the point.
Is your problem that I used calories as a way to measure the value of the food?
Should I have used price? That's not valid in my opinion. Wasting a spoonful of expensive caviar is not as bad as wasting 10 kg of rice. And I have no problem people wasting their money.
I just don't get your point. Is there a way to look at this situation (deliberately ordering something you know your gonna throw away to not inconvenient the staff) and not consider it wasteful?
PS: If your salad's calories is 90% from oil, you're using too much oil.
> Is there a way to look at this situation (deliberately ordering something you know your gonna throw away to not inconvenient the staff) and not consider it wasteful?
Obviously, the OP who explained that they do it that way doesn't see it as wasteful. Neither do I.
The cost of a hamburger is about 1/3 cost of ingredients and 2/3 everything else, including labor to serve it to you. Of the ingredients, it's the beef, then the tomato, lettuce, etc, and the bun is basically free.
Most restaurants that serve hamburgers have an ordering system that is streamlined for the kind of burgers people order. By the way, a burger is a kind of sandwich and by definition includes the bun. Try ordering a burger with no bun at a McDonald's and see how much extra time it takes, and what kind of looks you get from the people serving you and the people in line behind you.
If you think that throwing away 100 calories and $0.05 worth of bread is wasteful, it's only because you're ignoring the time and energy of the people that are being saved.
I think nutritional waste is worse than wasting money, you obviously think the opposite. I also think it's worse to order something to throw it away deliberately.
I guess the old saying "agree to disagree" applies.
If you set a dollar bill on fire that's wasting money.
If you throw away a dollar's worth of rice, for no reason, that's about the same.
However, there are plenty of ways to donate the dollar and not so many ways to usefully donate the rice, so yes, wasting the money is worse, but that's not really what I am getting at here.
What we're talking about is whether you will inconvenience others to save some trivial amount of food. My position is that saving a hamburger bun is not worth making someone's day worse who works in a hamburger shop. The money is just one way of measuring it.
>>> If you set a dollar bill on fire that's wasting money.
As I said, I don't care about wasting money. Do so as you wish.
>>> If you throw away a dollar's worth of rice, for no reason, that's about the same.
Yeah, economically speaking. But you are literally wasting more food in this case, and for no good reason other than people literally having to do their job.
>>> However, there are plenty of ways to donate the dollar and not so many ways to usefully donate the rice
You are not donating anything in this conversation! It's not like he's donating the bun to anyone. You are comparing wasting a bun vs wasting rice. It's still a waste, and one is worse than the other, for the same price. You don't feel that wasting 100g of kobe beef is less worse than wasting 100 kg of generic beef?
>>> My position is that saving a hamburger bun is not worth making someone's day worse who works in a hamburger shop.
They literally have to do less work.
Finally, what is your point?!?! That is ok to waste food intentionally? Seriously?! Even if it's a trivial amount in money, you realise it adds up, right? It's a real problem, and it's not a financial problem. Are you just being a contrarian for no good reason? Is "agree to disagree" not good enough for you?
That's not true. You'll go out of ketosis if you eat a sandwich. Especially one as huge as a Subway roll. A six inch has 37 grams of carbs in the bread alone, and most low carbers stick to under 20 per day.
Most food labeling in the US is done this way. Gross measures (total volume, weight, etc) are in imperial while the nutrition facts are in metric. So milk will say, serving size 12 Oz, protein XX g.
> Most food labeling in the US is done this way. Gross measures (total volume, weight, etc) are in imperial while the nutrition facts are in metric. So milk will say, serving size 12 Oz, protein XX g.
Both net contents and serving size include metric measures.
"Food labels printed must show the net contents in both metric (grams, kilograms, milliliters, liters) and U.S. Customary System (ounces, pounds, fluid ounces) terms." [0]
"The serving size is expressed as a common household measure followed by the equivalent metric quantity in parenthesis." [1]
Except the metric serving sizes are very inconvenient unless you like to do long division in your head.
For example, I have two yogurts, one has 18g carbs per 170g serving, the other has 34 g per 227g serving. Quick, how much more carbs would I have if I ate the same amount?
It's a lot easier to tell if you know one is 6oz and the other is 8oz, or if the servings were designed in metric sizes (e.g. 150g and 200g).
Quick, how much of that tub of yoghurt is a serving? Are you supposed to eat the whole packet of crisps at once or just some of them because it's a "family pack"? The per-serving information is extremely crude and only good for a rough glance. If you want to be more precise, use the per-100g values or whatever they use in the US.
Actually they're very useful if you're weighing your food with a scale. A good food scale lets you work in both metric and imperial units, and usually provides mass in grams.
Most people in the US measure food in ounces, but carbs are almost always listed in grams. It's common enough that I didn't even think about it when I wrote it.
I'm on a diet at the moment, tracking everything I eat. Someone who asked me how the diet was going told me last weekend "rodents eat grams. Humans eat ounces." I was left utterly speechless.
Some products just has it by tradition, even in the most metric parts of the world like Scandinavia we still do wheel sizes and screen sizes in inches. It's a bit weird but I assume everyone buys camera lenses in mm too out of tradition.
I was really surprised when I went to Australia and found tv's sold with centimeter diagonals.
Oz weights on steaks is not used outside North America though I'm quite sure.
Interesting. In UAE, it's 6/12 even though the country is 100% metric. Actually, it's not weird at all in my experience, because: 1) you get used to it, and 2) you can "see" the sub in front of you, so it doesn't need any conversion or anything.
'As part of the settlement, Subway agreed to institute practices for at least four years to ensure its bread is at least 12 inches long. The judge approved $520,000 in attorney fees and $500 for each of the 10 individuals who were representatives of the class, but no monetary claims were awarded to potential members of the class.
"It was difficult to prove monetary damages, because everybody ate the evidence," said Thomas Zimmerman, who was co-lead attorney for the class. Zimmerman said the attorney fees are being split among 10 law firms.'
I think that's fair in a case like this. The lawyers are the ones who got Subway to change their practices. The 10 individuals wouldn't have been anyone who was specially hurt compared to the millions of other customers, just whoever bothered to spend the time signing up.
I sure wouldn't. His science is a joke. Note that none of the "ten steps" quotes a single reference. (Frankly, I stopped reading at "digestive cancers")
Subway prides themselves on having low or no fat in sandwiches as a great way to lose weight. The catch is that the carbs are there. ie, bread. Sneaky.
Yea I switched to a keto diet a few years back and it's made a world of difference. Bread is really terrible for you, especially in the quantities we eat in the western world.
A subway sandwich is terrible for you with its bread to filling ratio, and now we see their chicken salads may not be as healthy as we thought as well.
I can't deny that the awful bread has the majority of the market in Britain -- [0] has a very good overview -- but traditional English bread exists and should be much more appealing to you, for example these [1]. Naturally, it's closer to French than Germany style -- historically, there's much more French influence on at least English food.
Most American bread is awful, but I disagree that a really open crumb is an abomination. A very crusty, tangy open-crumbed sourdough is practically heaven.
That said, I'd love to find a decent schwarzbrot near Belmont..
To give American grocery store sliced white bread some texture, just toast it!
Still, essentially American bread is just bread, that is, made almost entirely just from flour, water, yeast, and salt. Maybe the main difference is that with machines the dough is kneaded a lot and, then, permitted to rise (have the yeast grow) a lot. Commonly can also get wheat bread that has some whole wheat flour and typically is not quite so soft on the inside.
One reason for white flour instead of whole wheat flour is that white flour keeps and whole wheat flour, with the wheat germ and its oil, will go rancid. IIRC early on, white flour was considered a luxury item because it was easier and cheaper just to grind whole wheat. Recently there are claims that whole wheat is better nutritionally, e.g., has more fiber, whatever the heck that is, is less of a shock to blood sugar, and has some nutrients missing from white flour.
Carbs are like Lego blocks. The singular blocks are called "sugars" and include things such as fructose (fruit sugar) and blood sugar.
When fructose or glucose enter the digestive system, they are readily processed and enter the bloodstream as glucose. Here, cells take up as much glucose as they can, which can turn into a problem if decades-long oversaturation continues unabated. The only way cells can block glucose from entering is by becoming resistant to a key that unlocks the entryway, insulin. Thus, diabetes develops.
In any case, carbs can become extremely long chains, forming things such as chitin, the sturdy outer carapace of insects. If you ever failed to squash a cockroach, now you know why.
A type of these complex sugars aka polysaccharids is called "fiber". Again, this includes things such as cellulose, which you can see if you tear apart a piece of paper, or lignine, which are the strands seen when you break a branch off of a tree.
We can't fully digest this fiber, but there are herbivores and especially ruminants who can. For example, cows have a special digestive system consisting of several stomachs, where they chew some plants, digest them, chew them again, digest some more and so on.
Now for why that's important for humans. In our digestive system, the dietary fiber becomes partially digested, turning into a soft gel that travels down our 30-foot digestive tract and helps push things along. To date, the entirety of our medicine hasn't created a medication that cleans the digestive system with same efficiency as dietary fiber. Cats and dogs have a relatively simple digestive tract; they can live off of turned salami but we can't.
Also, dietary fiber swells up, giving you a feeling of fullness and slowing down the rate of absorption of sugars. You see, now the digestion actually has to work to extract food, which reduces the onslaught of sugar into the bloodstream.
The problem is that dietary fiber makes the food harder to cook, chew and digest. And boy, do food companies hate that. Dietary fiber reduces the throughput of customers. Why would a fast food company want you to eat a hamburger for 30 minutes? They want you chewing that badboy in 2 minutes, out the door and then back right away, since food without dietary fiber does not satiate. Do you see the situation?
Yup, in a convenience store can see lots of evidence of the five main food groups -- sugar, fat, caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine! :-) Can see a lot of the first three at fast food restaurants! Or at a donut shop, 24 x 7, can see sugar, caffeine, and fat.
So, right: Late at night, a dozen glazed donuts and a gallon of strong coffee with a lot of sugar and real cream will keep one awake a few more hours!
That case of pig out gives a lot of instant energy that will likely pay for later: Get fat; develop some insulin immunity; raise blood pressure. So, the body pumps out too much insulin; the blood sugar is all burned off; and now the insulin has the blood sugar too low; the person feels weak or sleepy and returns for some more coffee and donuts!
Better to get off that addiction to fat, sugar, and caffeine. Maybe wheat bread is better for this than the usual US white bread.
Thanks for the clear definition, description, and use of fiber.
Gee, for all the insults I've done to my 30' feet of intestines over the years, I just got back the results of a blood test of my stool sample: "Normal". So, apparently so far I've avoided colon cancer! Supposedly the fiber and its actions can help avoid colon cancer.
>When fructose or glucose enter the digestive system, they are readily processed and enter the bloodstream as glucose. Here, cells take up as much glucose as they can
An excellent reason to have as much muscle as possibile so all these delicious carbs go into making your muscles look nice and full. Mmmm I love carbs. I also hate it when people try and make carbs look evil, it's so necessary for me. My daily maintenance calories is 2700. Anything less than that and I'm losing weight. Without carbs I'd look flat and have to eat that all from solid food :(
Unless you have little muscle. Then you should probably avoid carbs.
Carbs do have a purpose, of course. They are just a source of energy and by themselves completely neutral. There are only two problems with them: the way we eat them and the way our body uses them.
In nature, carbs are never found isolated. They always come with dietary fiber and in varying degrees of complexity. But in processed food, carbs are artificially designed to be as simple as possible.
From bread and pastry to candy and fruit, the food we eat has been scientifically engineered to contain the lowest common denominator. Food companies see nothing wrong with this: they want every Fig Newton to be the exact same, but this ultimately means depriving us of variety of tastes and nutrients that naturally should exist in food. This hurts us in the long run tremendously.
Even the fruit we eat and which is arguably the source of healthiest carbs we can find has no resemblance to what is found in nature. Bananas are a fine example of this.
The variety of bananas commercially available in the world has been reduced to a single variety: Cavendish. From Ecuador to Estonia, you can walk into any store and find the exact same bananas, right down to shape, size and color.
If you open those bananas up and take a bite, you will notice they have no seeds. How do they reproduce then? They don't: they are sterile, genetically engineered clones of one another. There are enormous banana plantations all around the world, and they are all growing the exact same clone of the exact same plant.
Have you ever heard of a term "banana republic" and chuckled a bit? The term has a grave history, as it denotes a country where the banana cartel (such a thing does exist) established a puppet government and shifted the entire economy towards a single commodity: bananas. But, as it turns out, this is completely unsustainable in the long run.
The problem with growing genetic clones of any plant on a global scale is that an ecosystem is only as healthy as it is diverse. Once you create uniformity for the sake of marketability, the entire structure is vulnerable to a single agent of catastrophic failure. In this case, the culprit has a perfectly fitting ominous name: Fusarium oxysporum aka Tropical Race 4.
The description of this fungus reads like the description of the Terminator: it is indestructible, has no mercy and never stops. When this fungus that's been honing its banana-slaying skills for millennia reaches the sterile, cloned Cavendish plantations, the effect is utterly devastating. Every single plant gets infected, wilts and then the fungus lies in wait in the soil for decades, rendering it toxic to bananas. For now, the majority of banana plantations are safe while customers remain blissfully unaware of the entire fracas.
Now to consider carbs as a source of energy. Carbs are like rocket fuel for the body. But, if they are taken into the body but aren't actually used, they start causing problems.
I do want to point out the abundance of fat in the modern diet. It is needed in minute quantities in our diet, and yet we're swimming in it. Ideal diet for a bodybuilder or an athlete would have 50% carbs, 45% protein and 5% or less fat.
This is almost right, but still manages to be dangerously wrong.
Frustose and glucose are very different, one never gets converted to the other. All cells can and will take up and metabolize glucose, but only the liver can import and metabolize fructose. Metabolically, fructose does not behave like a carbohydrate, but like alcohol.
Insulin affects mostly fat, muscle and liver cells. They react by storing the excess glucose, which they do harmlessly. Excess glucose does not cause insulin tolerance; fructose seems to do that, thought I don't remember the whole mechanism.
Neither chitin nor lignin are carbohydrates, lignin isn't even chemically related. Even ruminants can't digest lignin, only a few funghi can do that.
At any rate, the bottom line is that frustose is a problem, glucose isn't, and lumping both under "carbs" confuses matters. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM for lots of details. (But don't take Dr. Lustig's words at face value---check other sources. Most of it is uncontroversial.)
I appreciate your input on the matter. You know as well as I do the complexity of dietary matters. You also know that there is a worrying dearth of first-hand information regarding diet. We mostly rely on aggregate studies that lump individuals together and try to answer extremely complex questions. What we find raises new questions without answering the old ones.
Now, as soon as you mentioned "fructose" and "alcohol" in the same sentence, I thought about a Youtube video I watched a while back. In that video, an energetic professor had a rapid-fire exposition of how fructose is toxic and affects the liver like alcohol, how cholesterol indicates risk of heart disease and that people are in danger because they have no idea what they're eating or how it affects them.
I scroll down through your comment and see a familiar name "Dr. Lustig". Hey, that's the name of the guy in the video I watched! Isn't that a coincidence? Don't you find it disconcerting that we both use a singular source of information, simply because there is no other?
I'm not saying Dr. Lustig is lying; I actually trust what he's saying, I think he has good intentions but our knowledge of diet is so limited, he's like a guy looking through a pinhole and trying to convey to us the wondrous sights he sees.
Now, that brings me back to my original comment. I've been a professional writer for 4 years now. I quickly discovered what I call "Writer's dilemma". In theory, there is a perfect piece for every occasion, the only problem is it takes an infinite amount of time to write it. So, I have to decide on where to cut corners.
No matter what I write, someone will disagree with it. No matter how I write it, there will be those who don't understand what I said. In that case, I can only make a bona fide effort to convey the information while making a good story. But simply quoting someone else doesn't make a good story. In fact, it's called plagiarism and can result in my client's AdSense account getting suspended.
Also, chitin is a derivative of glucose. I checked that in 5 seconds on Wikipedia, it's the very first sentence. So, in trying to correct me, you also got at least one of your facts wrong. But I wrote a good story.
Typically it has a significant amount of sugar (like, considerably more sugar than salt, 1 gram or more per slice).
Also lots of dough conditioners which are added for various reasons.
I know I've eaten commercial bread with enough lactylate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactylate) in it to give me some pretty awful gastrointestinal symptoms. My test wasn't blinded, but the effect was dramatic enough. At the moment I don't recall if it was Sodium stearoyl lactylate or Calcium stearoyl lactylate.
Fiber is simple, it's any carbohydrate that humans can't digest.
> Typically it has a significant amount of sugar (like, considerably more sugar than salt, 1 gram or more per slice).
Contrary to graycat's ingredient list, sugar is a key ingredient of nearly every leavened bread recipe. About 40g/loaf is the typical amount (about three tablespoons). I would be very surprised if you could find a bread recipe that doesn't have about that much sugar, unless it is specifically trying to work around sugar.
Are we discussing added sugar? Traditional English bread doesn't include much sugar, if any. (By "traditional", I mean the bread my mum made by hand at home, or purchased from the local bakery. Most supermarkets don't sell it.) Modern recipes add sugar to increase shelf life.
I bake bread at home (in Britain, using a standard recipe). I use a single teaspoon of sugar to feed the yeast before mixing it in; so most is consumed by the yeast.
The biggest taste difference is if you forget the salt, and then varying the type of flour e,g. mixing in rye, spelt or other types and changing butter for olive oil, adding seeds etc.
Adding multiple tablespoons of sugar sounds quite disgusting; it has plenty of taste without. A warm freshly-baked loaf is just the best!
Also, the point stands that I make bread with minimal or no sugar in it. I just don't make it all that often.
As far as the bread in the stores, it's usually in the bakery section. I think Walmart's sourdough doesn't have much sugar in it, but they stock it in the bread aisle. Brand is Sam's choice. (does soft sourdough bread count in the soft bread category we are now discussing?).
> made almost entirely just from flour, water, yeast, and salt.
So my "almost entirely" was my qualification or safety valve! I didn't know just how much sugar, dough conditioner, etc.
I did know that the French bread I've had in the US claims loudly that ALL it has is "flour, water, yeast, and salt" so concluded that US white bread doesn't actually need a lot more. This list of 4 for French bread is also elsewhere in this thread.
whoops! You're totally right. I had heard of the name of the USA process before and when looking it up, that was the top result in google.. i should have more closely read it to confirm, but you are totally right. the usa uses a different industrial process cause our wheat is more protein-rich.
Wheat/whole grain bread always tasted like mud to me, with an unappealing rough distracting texture. Never really got how there was enough demand for it to be produced even 1/3 as much as white wonderbread-type bread, which has always seemed perfect to me.
Whole wheat flour is somewhat bitter. Children are especially sensitive to bitter flavors and, thus, don't like wheat bread, coffee, etc. But, grown up, wheat bread, along with dark breads from Central Europe, etc. can no longer seem too bitter and can have some desirable texture and flavors. So, can get some liver wurst on rye bread with brown mustard or some such!
made almost entirely just from flour, water, yeast, and salt
Read the entire ingredients list; you may be surprised. Even the "flour" is generally made from just the endosperm. Only if it says "whole wheat/grain" do they use the whole seed.
It is incredibly dense, like a brick. A slice is more like a non-crunchy cracker. I like it because it doesn't seem like it ever goes stale. (Or maybe it does and the texture doesn't change?)
It is good but you would have to be an extreme German nationalist to enjoy it more than a good French baguette.
Yes, something like that, but this shop version is not good. You want it fresh from a baker, and then it will be a little bit less dense and have a much more pleasant texture. It is excellent the day it was made and the next and then stays okayish for about 3 more days, when stored in a paper bag or a wooden box. It keeps a bit longer in plastic but will go moldy instead of dry. But the way it goes dry does not fit the word 'stale' imho.
If you put it in a toaster it will still be good after 5 days. The time also depends on the flour - rye keeps longer than wheat, and things like a generous amount of sunflower seeds help.
Baguette is good too, but is only good for like half a day. And I feel better if I go for the darker bread most of the time.
mechanically separate meat is a paste-like meat product produced by forcing pureed or ground beef, pork, turkey or chicken, under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue.[1]
What is unappealing about that? It's still meat, just finely ground. And if you're keen on not wasting meat, it's a great way to get the last bit of meat off a carcass.
Does it have a different macro nutrient or vitamin content as a result? Seems like you'd get more calcium, or other bone matter if it was done that way.
Just to be a bit more specific - one a chicken carcass has had the main cuts of meat removed they use machines to remove the last bit of meat. Yes, that means bones get crushed and have to be filtered out later.
That still doesn't concern me. What would concern me is throwing away perfectly good meat simply because it's not feasible to remove it from the bones. What a waste that would be.
A valid point, though there might be others. Texturising additives which keep and store well (almonds, almond-meal, or almond paste might, say, keep longer and better than chicken, with less refrigeration) could also be considerations.
It's also possible that almonds rejected from other uses (for cosmetic reasons, small fragments) might be less expensive than whole, high-grade consumer almonds.
Yeah...I don't see too much to be outraged about here. If you want to be upset about adding soy to the chicken you eat, be upset about the soy they add to the chicken before they kill it. Soy isn't part of the natural diet for chickens, so feeding it to them means also feeding them antibiotics. If anything, lowering the percentage of chicken that's raised in that way would make it healthier.
My father in law raised chickens 40,000 at a time. He made good money doing that because he was early in taking advantage of new chicken breeds and knowledge of chicken nutrition and disease control. E.g., since he was raising chickens indoors, he had to supply vitamin D that chickens would otherwise get from the sun.
IIRC, in the wild, chickens ate seeds, insects, and maybe more. They might have eaten a soy bean if they had found one. IIRC US soy beans were imported from Asia; so, maybe chickens and related birds in Asia ate soy beans.
He also fed his chickens anchovies: So, in Chile, they would catch tons of the little fish and sell them cooked in 55 gallon drums. He said that the anchovies were an astoundingly good growth factor. The faster can get the chickens to grow, the less number of days have to feed them just to stay alive; so rapid growth is important.
He never mentioned that he gave anti-biotics because he fed soy beans.
For the soy beans, he grew a lot of those himself.
Eventually the big margins went out of the chicken business. He was in northern Indiana where the winters can be just darned cold, e.g., -40 F and 50 MPH winds, and that was cold the day I was in it. So, in the US, raising chickens moved to the US South where there were warmer winters and longer growing seasons for more soy beans.
When I asked him about some of the issues in raising chickens I read in the news, his answer was fast: He asked "Did the whole chickens I bought have any fat?" I said "Yes". And then he said, "Then they had to have been healthy." First cut, he was probably right. He also knew what a sick chicken was: Each day he had to walk through his big chicken houses, gather up the birds that died during the night, and toss them into a big trench that he dug and covered over occasionally.
I think there's still something to be outraged about if they are selling "chicken" that is only 50% chicken. When they advertise something called "oven roasted chicken", it should be nearly all chicken.
Semantics. It _is_ still "oven roasted chicken"..."chicken+"
Marketing trust is out the window; if it doesn't explicitly say its 100% fresh whole-piece chicken, cooked today, it might as well be meatloaf or McDonald's "shakes"
My point was that even the chicken breast you buy in the supermarket is, unless it's antibiotic-free, not really 100℅ chicken either. Choosing this (Subway adding soy to the chicken) as the line that was crossed seems arbitrary. To my mind, the line was crossed a long time ago. It's why I only eat meat a few times per year and I ensure that it's the expensive all-natural variety. I'd rather eat vegetarian than the frankenmeat that's most common in this country.
> Soy isn't part of the natural diet for chickens, so feeding it to them means also feeding them antibiotics.
Do you have any more info on this? I was under the impression that giving chickens antibiotics was illegal and so feckless that it isn't even worth breaking the law for. I could be wrong as well, honestly.
No, it's growth hormones, not antibiotics that are illegal, and would be quite pointless even if legal - that's the urban myth you're thinking about. Antibiotics are legal and are still being used with abandon.
Antibiotics can be used in poultry feed, but must be phased out prior to marketing such that there are no detectable levels in the meat.
This addresses concerns over antibiotics in the consumed product, but not the problems of antibiotic resistance promoted through use in animal feed, which really must stop.
Apparently, cattle digest cellulose fine, but the lignin in the wood interferes with their cellulose digestion. Treating the sawdust with nitric acid and heat breaks the cellulose-lignin bond and makes it more digestible. (Due to onerous government regulation of nitric acid, the farmer in question went on to develop an alternative method of sawdust processing which doesn't use it, but the article doesn't provide any details on that.)
Glad I'm not the only one. Just like with the Ikea meatballs, I have this creeping fear that one of these tests will have "HUMAN DNA" in the meatballs or "chicken" or what have you.
Relax! With the rumor that some fast food hamburgers had ground up worms, an answer was that the fast food place wanted to make money and keep down expenses, and per pound worms were more expensive than beef. So, no ground up worms in the hamburger!
Well, for human DNA in the hamburgers, sure, likely "more expensive than beef"! :-)
Still you're paying for a chicken patty and you're getting 50% filler. I mean, remember when TacoBell was called out because their beef was only 30% meat?
Subway has become the supplier of subs at the lowest cost. What this means is that bean counters dictate what the subs contain. It's never top line products and they add fillers where ever they can without killing the flavor 100%.
It's not a surprise that they use soy. It's just unfortunate that they have to get to this point.
I don't know if it's universal but my local subway has reduced the diameter of the bread rolls. Yes, they are 12 inches in length but they are smaller over all. Another cost cutting step that will eventually hurt them.
>Subway has become the supplier of subs at the lowest cost. What this means is that bean counters dictate what the subs contain.
Well, corporate bean counters would have sold heroin to children if it was profitable and they could get away with it.
That's the thing, though: Subway should not be able to get away with it. As long as it calls the product it sells "chicken", it should be chicken, and anything else should end with huge fines and/or closing down of the chain (e.g. with a "three strikes" type of thing).
(Edit: this is in reference to the grandparent post which mentions selling heroin to infants )
Nestle still does the milk formula trick at hospitals and maternity courses, where try to get babies addicted to milk formula. They even have "pre-conception courses".
> "Our recipe calls for one per cent or less of soy protein in our chicken products."
> "We will look into this again with our supplier to ensure that the chicken is meeting the high standard we set for all of our menu items and ingredients."
Ah, the beauty of third parties shows itself once again. "Now, supplier, we want a one hundred percent chicken product, but we will only pay 50% of what that would cost. We're relying on you to get this right."
Nearly every gas station and general store in the land will sell you a much better sub for the same price or less than Subway charges for their aggressively mediocre products.
I personally don't care about chickens, they are basically a moving vegetable to me. But we don't pull chickens out of a magic chicken tube, we grow them in huge barns, with a great deal of intention.
His point is that though they may be "needlessly slaughtered", they would not have been born if not for that purpose.
My personal extension of this is that if you believe that the well-being of the chicken is all that matters, and if you believe that the chicken was better off never having lived, then you should avoid meat. However, if the chicken is better off for having lived, you should eat meat.
Thanks for the comment! It's an interesting point to raise. Personally, I don't think most farmers, who raise chickens for the express reason of selling them for their meat or eggs, would continue raising chickens if there was no demand for their products.
These chickens often live in squalor and die of disease or physical trauma. It is better for these chickens to have never lived.
However, if you would like to raise pet chickens in decent conditions, and you just so happen to eat a few of the eggs they produce naturally with no coercion, then it is all good for these chickens to be alive
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
As someone who eats these fake chicken sandwiches occasionally, cant say I'm surprised. I always assumed these things were the equivalent of chicken hot dog patties or something. Don't know why people eat these things... oh ya -- it's the only food place open in SF SOMA late night.
> it's the only food place open in SF SOMA late night
Wow that surprises me. I would have though SOMA would have been one of the best places in the world for people with disposable income leaving startups late and wanting to buy food on the way home.
> SOMA is the office district, with some apartment buildings added.
Warehouse district is more accurate. And SoMa has shaped much of San Francisco culture. Maybe not the way we see it now, but without SoMa, many geeks and artists may not have settled here in the 90s.
When you think of loft living in San Francisco, you think of SoMa. Dance parties? 1015, Mezzanine, Cat Club, DNA Lounge, etc. Spaces for who don't partake in vanilla sex? Folsom Street, Power Exchange, Wicked Grounds.
And with all this, it's still surprising there's no seedy diner in SoMa for people to sober up in at 2am.
Subway is the unfortunate choice for when I'm drunk enough to eat, but not too drunk enough to not care about how fat I get. DNA pizza is for the rest of the time.
The 'chicken' in most microwave dinners is chicken loaf with textured vegetable protein. Basically what Subway is serving. But it's specified in the ingredients.
What exactly are people expecting when they order these things ? Are they unable to tell the texture is plasticky and highly processed, unlike normal "stringy" chicken meat you prepare at home ?
I recently bought my first chicken sandwich in a very long time from subway, and apart from being quite apalling with barely any semblance to chicken, I literally could not eat the chicken because it stuck like glue to my braces and my palate.
One of the worst food experiences in quite some time, and while I've realised lately that I'm quite a bit more 'sensitive' to bad food, I still have a hard time believing that more than a few percent wouldn't react quite negative to the very obvious difference in both taste and texture? However, I must still assume I'm wrong in my intuition, or they would've quickly returned to using more chickeny chicken, wouldn't they ?
It's 'subway chicken' not chicken. Same with McDonald's, the burgers are objectively horrible when compared to anything made with care, but we get used to the taste. I think it's actually the fries that make it work.
The other restaurants tested had 85-90% chicken instead of 50%. The chicken ends up ground up into tiny bits and bound with other things - basically salt and sugar - so I don't think it is possible to have 100% chicken post-processing. The difference is something like the difference between a raw plank and particleboard.
IMO, if it is 85-90% chicken then labeling it "chicken" is not unreasonable.
So long as you're eating chicken, adding in the skin isn't too unreasonable. You eat the skin with chicken wings and fried chicken anyway. And it's not like they're using chicken skins in vegan foods, where you otherwise wouldn't expect the involvement of chicken.
i'm certainly not surprised, i dont have an issue with them putting soy in the chicken, the only issue i have is them advertising as just "chicken", if they instead advertised it as chicken + soy, then i'd be totally fine with it.
Well, soy is not the worst it could be. If it doesn't affect the taste too much, I wouldn't actually mind it. OTOH, I've eaten in some vegetarian places which make faux chicken, faux beef, faux shrimp etc. which taste pretty much like (at least some variations of) the real thing. As a meat lover, I was surprised how close they are to the real thing, I now believe with some effort at least most of the common meat usage can be substituted away. Of course, there's still a difference - they are not as good as a real quality juicy steak - but they are closer than I thought they could be.
Another thing - I'm not sure I understand what "50 percent chicken DNA" means. It can't be literally DNA - specifically DNA is a minuscule percentage of the overall cell mass. Do they mean of all DNA samples 50% are chicken DNA and another 50% is other DNA? That'd ignore all ingredients that don't have DNA at all. Or do they mean 50% of the whole piece is chicken cells which are identified by their DNA, and another 50% of the mass is something else? I'd very much like to know what exactly they tested and how.
> I now believe with some effort at least most of the common meat usage can be substituted away.
I have had the chance to have the impossible burger a couple of times, and, at least for hamburgers, it is a VERY good substitute, both in taste, mouth feel and overall satisfaction.
Too true. People who eat at Subway must have some idea that they're not paying for the best, and frankly I'd guess most would be thrilled to learn that the secret filler wasn't rat ass.
If you're only eating one chicken sandwich. However, if consumers turn a blind eye to this, it sets an unhealthy precedent.
As a large consumption of soy has been associated with decreased testosterone. If more and more business start toeing the regulation lines and only putting in as much real meat as legally needed, filling the rest in with soy, it might start an epidemic.
Maybe I'm a little dense here, but that reads very strange to me and does not seem to make any sense. A burger made of 50g chicken and 50g poly styrene would still contain 100% chicken DNA.
How much DNA (in what metrics?) does a gram of chicken contain compared to a gram of soy?
This is a strange question. A plant is made out of cells containing DNA, an animal is made out of cells containing a different DNA. Polystyrene isn't made out of cells so it does not contain any DNA.
So basically of all cells found it was 50% soy, 50% chicken.
Subway chicken is absolute garbage. When my Gardein Vegan mock-chicken (made of mostly soy, no less!) tastes better than their "actual chicken", there's a problem.
I'm amazed so many people are fine with the other ingredient being soy; I could go on for hours as to why that's among the worst things to be substituted with.
-95% of soy in the US is GMO, lacking any genetic variance and little make-up of microorganisms (good bacteria.)
-It's also a horrible source of fats, and more in particular the omega-6 to 3 ratio is incredibly hostile to basic function on the cellular level. There's also next to zero amino acids. (Think cancer risk, immune diseases, hormone disruption.)
-It's basically a carbohydrate. Considering a significant number of most of these soy-containing foods are carbs to begin with, it's just another contributor to our diabetes/obesity, cancer and most importantly, MENTAL HEALTH health epidemics. (Mental health pertaining too the poorly balanced diets, poor fats and lack of good gut microflora.)
It's alright to look at these foods as an once-in-a-while treat, but when you consider that nearly every processed food item is 'enhanced' with soy to make it cheaper and still some-what satiating is a concerning thought to just have these every so often. Rice's from Uncle Ben's, Kraft peanut butter, margerines and nearly all processed meats and cheeses contain significant amounts of soy("Vegetable Oils."
This is the current state of food created by the lobbyist-run FDA and various companies like Monsanto controlling the market for their own greed under the excuse of 'feeding the growing population.'
Smacks of conspirology and pseudo-science. Who cares if it's GMO? All food we eat is GMO. Non-GMO animals and plants hate to be eaten (well, most of them, some use being eaten as distribution strategy, but even those aren't targeting humans), and take measures to avoid it. That's why thousands of years ago humans started the project of genetically modifying them to make them more eatable. And we were spectacularly successful.
Not sure what genetic variance of the soy I'd eat would make for me - the genetic material would be destroyed anyway once I eat it.
Also not sure what it has to do with micro-organisms.
Phrases like "incredibly hostile to basic function on the cellular level" again sound like pseudo-science - what it actually means? Which function? How hostile?
The total content of the following amino acids were quantified in the soybean samples using NIRS: Glutamic Acid (Glu), Aspartic Acid (Asp), Alanine (Ala), Arginine (Arg), Phenylalanine (Phe), Glycine (Gly), Histidine (His), Isoleucine (Ile), Leucine (Leu), Lysine (Lys), Methionine (Met), Methionine and Cystine, Proline (Pro), Serine (Ser), Tyrosine (Tyr), Threonine (Thr) and Valine (Val).
Etc, etc. - in short, I'm not sure what you're talking about here except for evil Monsanto capitalists being out to kill us all.
> And if all "food we eat is GMO", why are some labelled non-GMO and other, GMO?
Because enough people believe - without compelling evidence - that foods which have had their genomes modified using modern methodologies are somehow more hazardous than foods which have had their genomes modified through millennia of selective breeding.
But what they're really saying, though, is we don't know enough about the GMO foods to introduce them into our diets. That using us as guinea pigs is not a good idea.
As if you "know enough" about other things you eat or drink. When was the last time a craft beer got FDA approval after 20 years of careful safety testing? When people stopped drinking sugary soda because that is poison fir you? When you had your steak dinner rigorously scientifically tested?
But no, you choose one thing that you can attach scary label to, and declare that because you didn't apply levels of scrutiny to it that you never ever had applied to your food, it is unsafe despite now decades of usage without any evidence of any trouble.
None of the bullets you list seems like a credible reason to not use soy. GMOs are perfectly healthy, as are carbohydrates. Lacking fat isn't a big deal either.
I suppose you might suggest there are healthier alternatives, but chief among those alternatives would be to not eat at a fast food joint.
I agree with you about GMO, however a better substitute for soy would be more chicken. Also, lacking fat is a big deal when it is substituted for carbs, and you are on a low carb high fat diet.
Tough crowd! I'm not going to get too detailed here, I'll let you do your own research:
-Hormone disruption from the lack of useable amino acids and 'bad cholesterol' from which your body cannot properly create/maintain cellular function (immune system, endocrine system, gene expression.) Alternatively, with healthy fats and saturated fats from unprocessed red meat, including the good balance of proper amino acids, for instance, your body can create the required hormones more efficiently and in proper form. Your endocrine system (HPTA axis) is incredibly important (and sensitive to disruption) to so many aspects in your body and controls the basic cellular function in any mammalian being. Huge contributor to neurodevelopment, mood and subsequently mental health.
-Hormone disruption from pesticides commonly used in todays farming (especially mega-farms specific to producing for these restaurant chains/grocers.) I encourage you to do your research on these specifically.
-Microflora, more specifically good gut health, is incredibly important in mood regulation and neurodevelopment. Your gut is commonly referred to in the medical world as the second brain -- over 90% of serotonin alone is produced and stored in your guts.
1. Yes, bad things happen when you don't have enough of all the amino acids. That's malnutrition. That would only matter if you ate soy and only soy.
2. Not all pesticides, just some, but yes that's true. But that's not specific to soy, it's specific to all crops. And crops are washed, you generally don't get significant doses of pesticides in your food.
3. The whole microflora mental health connection science is in it's infancy. The entire thing reads like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon: some microfloura produce neurotransmitters, which can affect the gut, which can cause an immune response, which can cause inflammation, which is associated with certain psychiatric conditions. I'm not saying there's nothing there, but we're years away from having a more complete understanding. Of course, I have no idea what this one has to do with soy.
The larger point-of-view I'm coming from is the fact that more and more of our foods (and food options) are becoming processed in irresponsible ways contributing to a more widespread malnutrition issue not far in the future. The population is overworked and sleep habits are becoming increasingly worse, both contribute to a reduction in neuroplasticity, for example; ultimately having a significant impact to the populations health.
All things considered it's very possible our medical science innovation falls behind the rate of increase of many diseases. This, in the future, may be directly attributed to irresponsible food industry practices happening right now. Throw that on-top of a huge unemployment wave that may happen in the future from automation, and you have significant increases in socioeconomic costs to any given country.
Before I had a heart attack, finding out the rest soy gave me a little more sanity. I'd hate to find out it was something more sinister. Not that false advertising isn't bad.
Ack just a few months back I started getting IBS symptoms and figured out I'm intolerant to soy, dairy and some spicy stuff. I end up having make a lot of stuff myself because I can't trust what is made in restaurants.
Sadly elimination is the only way. I started having bowel issues and my kidney health started plummeting (I have kidney problems due to autoimmune condition but that is another story.) so I eliminated everything but the basic stuff from my diet till my bowel movements are normal. Next I added things one by one and waited a few days to see if any change. It is tricky because sometimes there is a lag from when you take something to when the effects are felt. The funny thing is an year ago I didn't have sensitivity to any of these items. I've also paid hundreds of dollars for various tests to see if I can identify these intolerances but none are any good.
50% of the DNA is soy doesn't mean 50% of the mass of food is soy or 50% of the volume is soy. It could be that the DNA is the major part of the soy that's included while the chicken has all sorts of non-DNA components like the rest of the cells and fat.
This story is quite inconclusive and that result could mean anything.
Does 50% chicken DNA means it's proportionally made of 50% chicken? I would be very surprised if DNA concentration was in any way proportional to actual volume or weight concentration, especially if you compare plant DNA to animal DNA.
Most plants have duplicated sets of chromosomes. Wheat has five times as many genes as humans, for example. Also, meat is made of striated muscle cells and those are huge. Though they are multinucleated so I don't know which ends up being more dense in DNA.
Its interesting that corporate had a different notion. So perhaps down on the line somewhere, someone is mixing in big bags of tofu into the chicken parts grinder and boosting their profit by selling it as 100% chicken. At least one of the Parmesan/sawdust suppliers was the culprit (that and lax oversight by the buyer).
Always a challenge when the fitness test becomes 'cost' rather than 'quality' how many things can be snuck in there.
I've only been to a Subway outlet once and was amazed by how much of it was processed meat - a relative said the same recently. Go into a good independent sandwich shop and all the meat will be unprocessed (except where expected) and you get more options like unusual cheeses. Subway has taken what was already a fast food (the sandwich) and made it even more generic.
In a good independent sandwich shop, you'll get a much better sandwich, with higher quality bread, and meat, but the meat is still going to be processed. Salami, ham, prosciutto, bacon, mortadella, pastrami, sausage, are all processed meats by definition. Most chicken and turkey will be processed/cured/flavored as well. You might occasionally find a sandwich shop that has a whole roast turkey or pig they'll slice, but it is uncommon.
When I say 'processed', I mean meat like ham or beef - stuff that I would expect to be real meat, but instead it's sliced from what I guess you could call a mold of reformed scraps. I have no real problem with it but it struck me as unusual given how much sandwich shops charge for their food.
Processing meat means curing, salting, smoking, etc. Everything except molding from scraps. A lot of processed meat is also molded from scraps, but that's not what makes it processed.
Molding reformed scraps sounds gross, and Subway chicken is gross, but molding reformed scraps is also what makes a beautiful salami or sausage. Anyway, I guess I'm trying to separate the category of food (processed), which can have merit, from Subway's abuse of it.
I guarantee you there are at least some processed chicken options at a local shop. Even an upscale one might have something like Boar's Head maple glazed.
Just an anecdote. I used to love chicken as a kid but lived in the countryside and my parents used to buy free range chicken at the next door farmer.
I then came to the US to study 10 years ago, ate a chicken sandwich in a subway, got sick and since then I can't eat any kind of chicken without being disgusted. So, yes, it doesn't surprise me.
Recipe inspired by Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Lots of hinting that fast food demons were eating people, but the eldritch secret of the Doublemeat Palace episode (2001) was that the Doublemeat Medley sandwich contained no meat whatsoever.
The headline got me sorta terrified, imagining what sort of repugnant, monstrous creature was being grinded and mixed into my Subway sandwich. Good to know at least it's just soy.