Fast food chicken: Testing Subway, McDonald's, A&W, Wendy's & Tim Hortons (CBC Marketplace)

This is the market that puts your favorite

fast

food

chicken

sandwich to the test. How much is

chicken

really? They have restructured and reformed it. Not every sample you've had in front of you is 100% chicken. Oh. are you kidding me and what is the

fast

food

industry speeding up to compared to homemade chicken? -food chains can I have one of those grilled chicken sandwiches please, not the fried ones, the grilled fried ones, without batter? I made 100% chicken, yes, look at the tone of all the big brands, it sure leaves you thinking it's all natural and just chicken, but is it to find out?

We turn to science. Matt Hardin is a coach at Trent University. His laboratories analyzed meat samples for industry and the government. How am I analyzing the DNA? That's why we are here. Well, a DNA test tells us how much chicken there is. in fact, in the chicken, it will give you a rough estimate of the ratio, it will give us a rough atman between the DNA of the chicken and the DNA of a plant. Plant DNA

testing

will not give us an exact percentage of the amount of chicken in the entire piece of chicken. but Matt says it's a good indicator of this idea, so if you're not getting 100% chicken DNA, does that mean you're not getting 100% real chicken meat?

Yes, exactly, then there will be a legitimate chicken mixed with some plant. filling yes, if there is something else in there besides chicken, the DNA test will find it. Matt and his team get to work on the samples we're

testing

, grilled chicken breasts, perforated strips, and this oven-roasted chicken while we wait for results from the lab at the CDC. We are preparing another test, a taste test, it's a chicken challenge, we bring you taste testers to judge this chicken, let's meet them at lunchtime, honey, come on. Wilma Hood takes underground cucumbers and black olives seriously, pretty good, always chicken, that little sausage with less fat. without sugar, you get a little bit better quality than you know is the best typical that we've seen, McDonald's will trust that you're getting the real stuffed chicken that will be 100% chicken breast and that's the lunch you guys have.

I want to see MacDonald, fast food gives this busy mom a break. They have chicken for the girls. Bruce Rose Heron feels better about chicken. Yes, grilled chicken, and his son too. Daniel believes that chicken burgers are a healthier option, they don't have as much sodium and they are just as bad. things in it if there's fast food, you better be ready for a snack when you pick it up tonight. I ran while the cast of the line likes to treat themselves. Go to Wendy. I love the stoned chicken sandwich. You know, the controls on a cool surface.

No. Rena has high blood pressure so be careful I'm looking at the salt the fat content our taste test is about to start sampling template our judges are waiting outside our studio instance Elissa is here to spice things up Toronto chef Rod Bowers welcome to our test kitchen thank you and to fill us in on the nutritional information from registered dietitian Christy Brissette rod, we're also going to ask you to put a little spin on this competition. What we want you to do is cook some chicken. Let's see if our testers can tell homemade chicken from fast food chicken.

I have to bring my gourmet test again. Do it, make it happen. I'm going to put some love in here and it's very simple, you just know what it really is. just some dried herbs a little salt that's all you need, check out your competition here these are our samples. I think I'm way ahead in this chicken game to keep this blind, unbiased taste test going to eliminate it. Only we know the brand behind the bows well, all our samples have been stripped, but there is still a place that is looking for a little love. I'm ready, come on, bring it, okay, the final sample is on you guys, ready to meet the testers. do it for them, okay, hey, Chester, come on, Rose Daniel and I are running away from all the fast food lovers to find out what's in store for them.

Welcome guys, you are here for the chicken taste test challenge. Are you guys up for the challenge, yes you can chicken, okay, we start with a big sample and take right at tender, tender, yes, I don't know, I thought so, mine was more rubbery, I found it a lot, rubber is your library, no, my stress, there you are, thank you below. up McDonald's this one with Zeus here mine seems a little stringy to me, stringy, okay, you have a good piece, what happens seems to be juice, here comes the first sample of Subway. I rent a space and it's priceless, what are you looking at?

Erra, I ran over you thinking what it is. They are real, they are very good, it looks like the grill marks are there just to make it look like you will get to the bottom of those grill marks later, very salty, everything has changed, let's see about the next

subway

item. Now example D is actually one of our first chicken strips, let's take a look at the pieces. They look real. I once thought they made good chicken. Okay, this is the first one. It tasted a little more seasoned. The owners have been much cleaner. To me it tasted more flavor than real chicken, it's something specialized, it's not chicken to me, I think it took too much salt, what will they say about Tim Hortons?

Okay, it tasted more like chicken because of the fibrousness and well, what? Did you think about this one that didn't know anything real? I found it very rubbery like it didn't taste any real kick mm-hmm while chewing it I wasn't sure it was chicken. chef rod let's start clicking but right now here's Wendy another flavor dad should say I think this is very good it was and I'm sorry I tried lemon I didn't love the taste the birthday tasted almost like sanitized even though it didn't No I find the taste in nothing good, it tastes more real and not too artificial when things are artificial they taste much better than the surreal oh dear oh dear it's true, what will Daniel think about the chef's homemade chicken, so here we are going to try.

G, these grill marks were possibly real. Will our best chef get the best ratings? Which was juicy. I love this natural flavor. I found mine a little harder to cut. I think that being said, although it tasted real, I found it a little salty, salty, okay, yeah and. pink I'm very comparable to the previous any of those I think these are options now that you've tried these seven pieces Did anyone have a particular favorite cost between F and G G tried the realest aha my favorite was G even though it was a little saltier, I'm going to choose F even though G was close, that's two to one for the chef.

Yo Rena has the deciding vote, will it be chef or Wendy's? My children would be mine. g g was your favorite, okay, juicy, it's fine. and it's tasty, so we have a little secret. Oh, one of our samples was actually prepared by Chef Rod. Does anyone want to guess which one it was? Everyone will probably choose G and we could spot the comfort food. chicken, good job, chef and now the least favorite, visually it seems made up, she wouldn't touch it, it's okay, she was afraid, you know?, it's okay, I was there, you just have to agree.

She simply stood up and Daniel agreed. it just takes away from the real thing, but I actually didn't even have much life that way, it's a huge success in this chicken challenge and we still haven't finished which of these pieces of chicken had the least amount of chicken that we expected 100. % of the lab results are misleading, I got a company that marked itself to help your friend, this is your market, whose change you think uses the least amount of chicken. Tweet me at CBC Charlie Fast Food Chicken, which will arrive right after we're testing. Popular fast food chicken sandwiches look like chicken, to me it's not chicken, according to our judges it tastes like chicken.

I found it very rubbery so everyone is wondering how much chicken is really in your chicken. Remember that this is the mystery of the meat that we ask of this DNA laboratory. sort out such a lovely little group of this. The Trent University lab has been testing and retesting our samples for months. We have results. Yes, they are in what we found in our chicken test. The engine sample turned out to be very close to one hundred percent chicken, except for two. I have more news for you, so it turns out that not all of the samples you've had in front of you are 100% chicken.

What kind of filling feelings would they be? What else would it be? It's a great question. Anyone can guess. Which of these chicken pieces had the least amount of chicken? I'm going to see, oh yeah, big time, are they right? Hmm, not quite, but a close sample of our dnh shows it might be less than 50% chicken. Wow! We're joking and we take sample C, our DNA test shows it's just a little over 50% chicken and who makes both C and D that way, chicken, oh oh, it's for the LC election, that's a misrepresentation, we expected 100% of

subway

chicken samples to have the lowest amount. of chicken DNA and the most fillers compared to the others, you get these cheap fillers that are not as nutritious for you.

Others said you call Subway great, it's a very good option, you know you don't feel bad, but it's not more misleading, we have a company that calls itself the healthy alternative, so what does the sandwich giant have to say during months? We have been asking subway questions about their chicken, we sent them our DNA results, we did not get clear answers we asked for. They refuse an on-camera interview, now questioning our science, but say they're concerned and are checking with suppliers to make sure their chicken meets their standards, but we still have questions, so we tracked down a food scientist who knows the industry.

Men, hello, thank you for inviting me to the University of Guelph. Ben Boyer specializes in processed meat, so these are samples they want to see. Yes, he is informing us about how he thinks fast food chicken strips could be made. He's probably a restructured guy. Potentially restructured product means putting together pieces of meat and then forming a single piece, they put them together, they use some non-meat ingredients to add value to those products, okay, add value, the translation costs less and what are those non-meat ingredients that have? We put them together directly from the company's website in a long list in no particular order.

We share it with our fast food facility. They were expecting just chicken, but our DNA testing shows the subway could only be half that. I don't know what handcuffs are. It's almost like a chemistry class, not a cooking class. Dietitian Christy Brissette isn't all that surprised that many of the ingredients were refined starches or different names for sugar, many different names for types of sodium, different combinations of salt, but according to Health Canada, they are said to be honest, They are all safe and approved, many of these, to be honest, you may also find insufficient sodium phosphate.

I don't have one and I like it a lot. What does that do? It is particularly important if you are going to freeze some of these products, it helps the chicken. retaining water keeps it juicy There are very strict regulations with sodium phosphate why is this so? Just to make sure it is a healthy and safe product. Is there any danger with sodium? No, there is certainly no more danger than any other type of salt. Well, Christie's not so sure. I think these will be the trans fats of the future. Research has shown us so far that when you have higher levels of these phosphates in your blood, you are at greater risk of heart and kidney disease. issues, they are included in Health Canada approved amounts that are considered safe, but we don't know the long term impacts of them on our bodies and our health, we will go with sodium phosphate, then sodium phosphates are used in all recipes except the one from Wendy's and we're going to mix this up, you can see we're already starting to form an oh, it's like becoming like a chili, yeah, and something that the meter adds that the other samples don't. t soy protein why would you need to put more protein in chicken products?

It's got great bonding ability, potentially improved texture, that kind of thing, and in a sense, that also makes the product a little bit more cost-effective. Okay, cheaper. Yes, exactly. Remember our DNA test. shows that subway strips and oven roasted chicken might only contain about 50% chicken and guess what the rest is mostly soy, so there's a good chance they're making more products that contain this ground chicken and shaping it into hamburger, yes, then ground chicken with zinc. The breast meat is shaped to look like this, let's just flip this over, flip it over and we'll see these grill marks here, okay, surely the food scientist knows about those grill marks.

What did he tell you too? There is probably some type of oven or grill. of the system that a lot of these sandwiches go through and get a very consistent grill mark design, but not even he's sure, so after a little research we think we've solved the secrets of grill marks according to a former employee and a plantprocessing, Dave. The grill marks are actually charred into the burger after it's already cooked and are pretty much just to show that the chicken challenge continues from a sodium perspective. You could also eat a large portion of nutrients. Shake it up.

This is your market. The dead market. your inbox once a week sign up for our newsletter at cbc.ca slash Marketplace the ultimate chicken challenge our grilled chicken sandwich test isn't over yet to find out how nutrition is distributed we sent more samples to a lab different how does fasting work? -Food Comparison with Home Cooked Chicken Nutritionist and registered dietitian Christy Brissette analyzes the results and gives us information on how many grams of carbohydrates she thinks are in our homemade food.chicken zero zero correct chicken as a protein, many of the ingredients were starches refined or different names for the sugar added to their chickens.

Chicken breast should contain no carbs at all and it's not the kind of carbs we want right now, I probably want protein but fast food chicken is 1/4 less than home cooks and when we look at the amount of sodium that it completely blew me away compared to home cooked chicken, fast food chicken had 7-10 times the amount of sodium and this Subway oven roast has the most sodium but the least amount of subway strips when you you eat the whole sandwich, two-thirds of your daily salt limit, so from a sodium perspective you might as well eat a big serving of poutine, the message is that those companies portray it, it sounds like you're taking it straight from a farm and it's just a piece of fresh meat, you don't know any manufacturing process and then it appears on a sandwich.

They put this halo of health over these chicken sandwiches where they look virtuous, they look angelic and people think they're doing themselves a favor and making a healthier choice. There is no such thing as pure, virtuous chicken that comes from the farm to your plate. Last question. Is anyone in the mood for chicken tonight? Maybe if it was good, okay, I'll eat. the chicken will be the same again next week at the market how not to get scammed who is in charge of attracting tourists since it is a mandatory nap for this place how clever it is shady it is deceptive we have been undercover for a long time something has gotten worse kick - 50 don't be fooled into blowing up the hospital's sky-high TV charges, whitey - they charge you 17 bucks a day for a TV, are you hooking up cable the way you do?

Another tax on this dick