Montreal Gazette - What McDonald's chicken nuggets really contain

(Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society): "…let me make clear that I am no fan of processed foods. The number of times I've eaten chicken nuggets can be counted on the toes of one chicken. But that's not because of any fear of multi-syllabic ingredients; it is the high fat and salt content that turns me off. So what are Chicken Mc-Nuggets really made of? Chicken!

[Michael] Pollan provocatively implies that the nuggets are 56 per cent corn. Where does that number come from? Well, chickens are reared on corn, and Pollan calculates the amount of corn that is converted into chicken flesh, and adds to this the weight of other ingredients that are made from corn, such as the dextrose used in the batter, and comes up with the meaningless but attention-grabbing 56 per cent. Using this logic, we could all be described as being made of plants, since every bit of our flesh can be traced back to some plant product."