The McNugget

Composition

The McNugget is a small piece of finely minced chicken meat held together with phosphate salts. The pieces are coated with batter, lightly fried to set the batter, individually quick frozen, packaged, and sent to stores. At the McDonald's stores, the McNuggets are deep-fried and sold.

In November 2003, McDonald's switched to using all white meat for McNuggets instead of the traditional combination of white and dark meat. This was heavily promoted as an effort to improve the item's flavor. McDonald's state that they use mechanically separated breast meat in the production of their McNuggets. A small amount of chicken skin is recovered with the breast meat.

At the same time that they stopped using dark meat, McDonald's announced that they were using less salt in the preparation of the McNuggets. This was recognized as an attempt to make their products healthier. However, the sodium levels listed in McDonald's nutrition facts have actually increased: from 530 mg for 6 pieces between 2000–2002, to 670 mg for 2003–2005.

Chicken McNuggets come in two shapes. The first resembles boot -- a rectangular shape with a stub jutting out of one of the corners. The second is a circle. Though the exact origin of these shapes is unclear, most believe the circle and the boot resulted from a need to maximize yield from the meat mixture.

The 2004 documentary Super Size Me alleged that McNuggets were, at one point in time, made from sick and/or old chickens unable to lay eggs, and that they included chemicals such as TBHQ (a preservative), Dimethylpolysiloxane (an anti-foaming agent), and other ingredients not used by a typical home cook. In 2005, these two ingredients were listed as ingredients of other McDonald's foods, not McNuggets. However, McNuggets do contain genetically modified ingredients.

History

McDonald's Chairman Fred Turner approached one of his suppliers in 1979 and requested “I want a chicken finger-food the size of your thumb. Can you do it?” Chicken McNuggets were developed soon thereafter.

They were introduced in 1983, after the chain's first attempt at a chicken product, the McChicken sandwich, was withdrawn after disappointing sales. (It was later reintroduced after the success of Chicken McNuggets.) McNuggets quickly helped McDonald's become the second largest purchaser of chicken (after KFC).

An alternate story is that McNuggets, and the dipping sauces, were developed by product development chef Rene Arend.

Trivia

In 1984, James Oliver Huberty killed 21 people and wounded 19 others at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in what became known as the "McDonald's massacre." Three years later, in 1987, his widow, Etna, filed a USD $5 million lawsuit against McDonald's, claiming that the massacre was triggered by her husband's consumption of excessive amounts of Chicken McNuggets. She alleged that monosodium glutamate (MSG) from the food interacted with the lead and cadmium that had built up in Huberty's body after 14 years as a welder. The claim was dismissed.

In the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, when the crew discover three corpses, Rimmer states, "They've got less meat on them than a Chicken McNugget." This was edited out of American broadcasts.