McDonald's Chicken McNuggets

I have to share a passage in The Omnivore's Dilemma that I just read which is absolutely, completely horrifying!!! On page 112, the author describes the ingredients in McDonald's Chicken McNuggets:

The ingredients listed on the nutritional flyer at McDonalds suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leaches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market prices and availability.

According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed foods possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nuggets from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the frying. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydorquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the insides of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our foods: It can comprise no more than .02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.

OH MY GOD!!! Lighter fluid!!! In a million-kazillion years, I cannot imagine any possible scenario where I would justify feeding my children -- or anyone!! -- lighter fluid. So then, how in the world does the FDA justify allowing a "family-friendly", child-focused restaurant like McDonald's to use this ingredient? Or, perhaps more importantly, how in the world does McDonald's justify wanting to using it in the first place? How can this possibly make sense to anyone at their corporate office? I just don't get it! McDonald's markets itself to our children; they do promotional tie-ins with the latest and hottest kids properties in order to entice our children into their stores; they promote themselves as being a family restaurant, and yet, they are knowingly including ingredients in their products which can poison our children. How does this happen? And what the hell is the point of having an FDA if they are going to make completely asinine decisions like this?

I am not trying to tell anyone else how to live their life -- really, I'm not!! I am simply using this blog as a way to share information that I uncover in my search to understand how and why I got colon cancer at the age of 38 (a disease which supposedly only affects ~5% of the population and for which the more typical profile is overweight 65-year-olds). So please don't feel like you have to alter your food choices on my account, or feel awkward about something that you choose to eat in front of me. Take this information and do with it whatever you want. The one request I do have, however, is that if you happen to be in the position of feeding my children at any time, please, please, please don't take them to McDonald's (or any other similar fast food restaurant.) Please help me keep their beautiful little bodies healthy and poison-free.