You're paying at the plump
If we carnivores are what we eat, we're stressed out and salt-injected. Maybe that explains a few things.
One of the ways America has tried to address high rates of obesity and cholesterol is by eating more of the lower-fat meats, most notably chicken. Chicken has less fat and fewer calories than beef. But more salt than you'd think.
News flash: The average chicken available at most supermarkets has a level of sodium per serving as high as a pack of fast food fries. That doesn't bode well for blood pressure, strokes, and other related medical problems.
That much salt doesn't come naturally to a chicken. Naturally a chicken has 45 to 60 mg. of sodium. Through a process called "plumping," up to 10 times that is injected in saltwater to encourage 15 to 30 percent more weight (varies by source). This way the dollar yield per pound is higher, and we get cheaper chicken. Cheap is relative; according to a Wall Street Journal article we're paying up to $1.50 per package and about $2 billion per year just for the saltwater factor.
You may note if you buy certified organic chicken (or any organic meat) you pay more per pound, but you're getting a less manipulated product. Of course "organic" varies by claim as well. We need a whole host of regulations to standardize it all.
Because salt is not an artificial product, the claim "all natural" may include plumping. What does "all natural" really mean? These days "hormone-free" or "no hormones" is also common on chicken packaging. That's a little misleading; hormones haven't been
Legally fed to chickens since the 1950s. Yet the average chicken is exponentially larger (from an average 2.2 pounds to now nearly 6 pounds) than 50 years ago, according to a 2007 joint study by the universities of Delaware and Maryland. Most of that has been done through genetic engineering and selectively breeding larger chickens.
Foster Farms is one raw chicken producer that commits to a plumping-free product and has, perhaps motivated by competition as much as anything, begun a campaign against plumping. Tyson, which also makes many processed chicken products, has said publicly its customers like the salt taste. Undoubtedly.
While we're on the topic, "cage free" or "free range" sounds healthier, but may not be what you think either. These phrases simply mean the chickens are not confined to small cages in which they can't turn around, preen, or do other normal behaviors. It may or may not mean that they are raised outside. Many cage-free birds are raised in large buildings where they can roam, although how much varies by producer. Labels don't typically distinguish. Still, most of these are at least not de-beaked (cutting off the beak end so they can't peck at neighbors through the cages, a behavior increased by confinement stress).
According to the USDA and the Trials of Hypertension program, Americans are consuming far more sodium than we were 30 years ago. Nearly 75 percent of that comes from packaged and processed foods. Rates of hypertension and heart disease have increased. In the trials, reducing sodium intake decreased those rates by a minimum 25 percent.
Most think chips, fries, and the shaker when we think of salt, but chicken?
Maybe we just need to accept paying more for healthier agricultural products. This has the added benefit of supporting sustainable farming and keeping local farmers in business. Centralized feeding operations and other large-scale operations have all but eliminated the family farm, a dying icon of our culture, and the open space it preserves.
I'm not against progress or smart agriculture. I do wonder if we are out of balance, frustrating those initial purposes of healthy food production by virtually unchecked efficiency.
We have regulated food in other ways toward restoring this balance. When profit margin and (some say) high-pressure tactics affect the way average farmers raise livestock, the public loses. Few things are more fundamental than food.
Sholeh Patrick, J.D. is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. E-mail [email protected]