Editorial: The Chicken Myth
Americans eat a lot of chicken. Driven by the hope that chicken
is somehow less fattening than beef or pork, Americans now eat
more than 1 million chickens per hour.
It hasn’t
helped. As a group, Americans are fatter than ever. In all likelihood,
the chicken craze has made us less healthy,
not the reverse. Here are seven reasons to give chicken a wide
berth:
Fat. Even at its leanest—white meat, no skin, no added
fat—chicken gets about 23 percent of its calories from fat. That’s
not much lower than lean beef, at 28 percent, and much higher than beans, rice,
or typical fruits and vegetables (less than 10 percent). Like beef, a substantial
amount of that fat is saturated fat—the kind linked to heart
disease, diabetes, and breast cancer.
Cholesterol. Cholesterol is not the same as fat.
Cholesterol is not visible, and most of it is in the lean portion,
lodged in the cell membranes. USDA figures show that a typical
cut of beef has about 86 milligrams of cholesterol in a 3.5-ounce
portion. The same serving size of skinless chicken (white meat)
has 85 milligrams. In contrast, foods derived from plants have
no cholesterol at all.
Bacteria. That intestinal “bug” that went around
the office last year might have been caused by salmonella or campylobacter—bacteria
found on approximately one-third of chicken products at retail stores. They
were in the chicken’s feces during life and splattered onto the skin
and muscle tissue during slaughter and evisceration. Cooking kills them. But
it does not kill the germs that landed on your kitchen counter, cutting board,
or hands as you unwrapped the bird.
Carcinogens. You definitely don’t want to eat raw chicken.
But neither do you want to eat heavily cooked chicken. The longer and hotter
the cooking process, the more cancer-causing chemicals form. These heterocyclic
amines are not chemical additives; they form from the chicken flesh itself
under typical grilling conditions. They are under investigation for possible
roles in colon cancer, breast cancer, and other forms of the disease.
Environmental factors. Raising and killing more
than 1 million chickens per hour is a massive operation. Unlike
asparagus, chickens defecate, and their accumulating litter leaves
farmers with a serious environmental problem. One common solution:
Feed it to cattle. To the surprise of consumers, chicken litter
is routinely added to cattle feed. If mixed to no more than about
15 percent of their feed, cattle will readily consume it.
Disease reservoir. Migratory birds naturally
harbor influenza viruses. But these viruses would be no more likely
than wolf viruses or lizard viruses to enter human populations
were it not for flocks of domesticated birds that serve as viral
breeding grounds. If there were no poultry industry, there would
be no epidemics of bird flu.
Cruelty. Anyone who has spent even a few minutes
in a chicken shed is shocked by the crowding and stress birds experience
during their six weeks of life. Perhaps the worst comes when workers
jam the birds into transport containers that carry them to the
slaughterhouse, often breaking legs or wings. At the processing
plant, the priority is on speed, not on kindness.
Of all the reasons
to leave chicken off our plates, perhaps the most compelling is
our children. They are at a higher risk than ever for obesity,
heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses. KFC and the
profusion of frozen chicken “convenience” products
take them in the wrong direction. Helping children set aside the
chicken myth is an important step toward good nutrition.
Neal D. Barnard, M.D.
President of PCRM
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