Chicken McNuggets



Chicken McNuggets are a type of chicken product offered by international fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's, which they introduced in 1983. They consist of small pieces of processed chicken meat that have been battered and deep fried.

Description and origin
The Chicken McNugget is a small piece of processed chicken meat that is fried in batter and flash-frozen, then shipped out and sold at McDonald's restaurants. It was conceived by Keystone Foods founder Herb Lotman in the late 1970s.

McDonald's first executive chef, René Arend, created the Chicken McNuggets recipe in 1979. "The McNuggets were so well-received that every franchise wanted them", said Arend in a 2009 interview. "There wasn't a system to supply enough chicken". Supply problems were solved by 1983, and Chicken McNuggets became available nationwide.

According to McDonald's, the nuggets come in four shapes: the bell, the bow-tie, the ball and the boot.

Ingredients
As of August 1, 2016, the ingredients within the United States are as follows: White boneless chicken, water, salt, seasoning (yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring, safflower oil, lemon juice solids, dextrose, citric acid), sodium phosphates. Battered and breaded with water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached wheat flour, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, dextrose, corn starch. Prepared in vegetable oil (canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil) with TBHQ and citric acid as preservatives and dimethylpolysiloxane as an anti-foaming agent. McDonald's ingredients can vary outside of the US. McDonald's announced that its Chicken McNuggets are now free of artificial preservatives, a change that the fast food giant has been working on for about a year.

Sale
Chicken McNuggets are sold in various portion sizes depending on the country of purchase. In the United States, they come in packs of 4, 6, 10, 20, 40 and 50 (in selected stores). In some markets, including the United Kingdom, they are sold in packs of 4 (as part of a Happy Meal), 6, 9 or 20 (as a "ShareBox"). In New Zealand and Australia, they are also available in 3-packs in Happy Meals and Heart Foundation-approved "Tick healthy" meals. A 50-piece McNuggets meal deal has been promoted at times for special events such as the NFL's Super Bowl.

McNuggets come with a choice of various flavors of dipping sauce (Pure Honey, Tangy Barbeque, Sweet n' Sour, Honey Mustard, Hot Mustard, Spicy Buffalo, Sweet Chili, Curry, Creamy Ranch, Habanero Ranch and Chipotle Barbecue). Ketchup is also frequently used as a dipping sauce.

They have recently been introduced by McDonald's in India, first as a part of its "Breakfast Meal" and later in the regular menu in May 2009. A halal version of the McNuggets have been sold at two franchises in Dearborn, Michigan, beginning in the early 2000s, bringing in double the average McNuggets sales.

Criticism
In a 2002 lawsuit against McDonald's, a judge commented that Chicken McNuggets are a "McFrankenstein" creation. The judge identified that rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan, McNuggets included elements not utilized by the home cook, including unusual sounding ingredients such as extracts of rosemary, vitamins (niacin, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid), and leavening (baking soda, calcium lactate, etc.).



The 2004 documentary Super Size Me states that "[o]riginally created from old chickens that can no longer lay eggs, McNuggets are now made from chickens with unusually large breasts. They're stripped from the bone, and ground-up into a sort of 'chicken mash', which is then combined with all sorts of stabilizers and preservatives, pressed into familiar shapes, breaded, deep-fried, freeze-dried, and then shipped to a McDonald's near you." Super Size Me also alleged inclusion of chemicals such as TBHQ (a phenolic antioxidant used as a chemical preservative), polydimethylsiloxane (a type of silicone used as an anti-foaming agent) and other ingredients not used by a typical home cook. This was subsequently restated by CNN. Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of What to Eat, says that the two said ingredients in McNuggets probably pose no health risks. As a general rule, though, she advocates not eating any food with an ingredient that is difficult for one to pronounce.

As of 2016, dimethylpolysiloxane and TBHQ are listed as ingredients in the McNuggets cooking process. According to Lisa McComb, a media relations representative for McDonald's, dimethylpolysiloxane is used as a matter of safety to keep the frying oil from foaming. The chemical is a form of silicone also used in cosmetics and Silly Putty. A review of animal studies by the World Health Organization found no adverse health effects associated with dimethylpolysiloxane. TBHQ is a common preservative for vegetable oils, cereals, nuts, cookies, chips and animal fats, found in other foods like Girl Scout Cookies and Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sets an upper limit of 0.02% of the oil or fat content in foods, which like other foods, applies to the oil used in McNuggets. Effective use of TBHQ is 1 gram per 5000 grams of cooking oil (1 gram per 11.023 pounds of cooking oil).

McNugget numbers
A mathematical problem, discussed on Eric W. Weisstein's MathWorld and Brady Haran's YouTube channel "Numberphile," is that of determining the greatest number of McNuggets which cannot be made from any combination of pack sizes on offer. For example, in the UK, McNuggets are sold in boxes of 6, 9 or 20 (excluding Happy Meals). Consequently, the greatest number of McNuggets which cannot be purchased exactly is 43, the Frobenius number of the set {6,9,20}.