Made of lemon juice and rice starch, the famous Chicken McNuggets might soon have a new formulation that veers away from its current recipe of 34 ingredients that comprises mostly of corn derivatives.
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The worldâ??s biggest hamburger chain says it began testing the new recipe in about 140 stores in OR and Washington in March 2016.
Believe it or not, a single Chicken McNugget from McDonald’s contains 32 ingredients and they’re not all chicken: sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate…the list goes on.
The chicken in McNuggets is made up of ground-up chicken that is then frozen before being transported.
McDonald’s has experimented with different formats and foods, including selling salads and other healthier items, since Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s chief executive, took the helm in an effort to turn around its fortunes after two years of decline.
“Simply removing preservatives from food doesn’t make an unhealthy food healthy”, said Despina Hyde, a registered dietitian at New York University Medical Center.
A healthier chicken McNugget may be coming to a McDonald’s near you.
Becca Hary, a McDonald’s representative, noted that McNuggets are now fried in oil that contains TBHQ, which is considered an artificial preservative. Parents in particular are cautious about what they feed their children. But the company did not say how much of that came from an uptick in customer visits, versus higher prices. Last week, Fortune reported that McDonald’s sales at established restaurants increased by 5.4 percent.
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This new preservative-free McNuggets trial is the first time the recipe has been changed since its national release in 1983.
