Fast food chicken: Testing Subway, McDonald's, A&W, Wendy's & Tim Hortons (CBC Marketplace)

this is marketplace putting your favorite fast-food chicken sandwich to the task how much of it is really chicken they've restructured it and kind of reformed it not all of the samples that you've had in front of you are 100% chicken Wow you're kidding and what's the fast food industry speeding off compared to the home cooked chicken the fast food chicken had between 7 to 10 times the amount of sodium get ready for the ultimate chicken challenge on your marketplace we're testing chicken from popular fast-food chains can I have one of those grilled chicken sandwiches please not the deep fried stuff the grilled no batter stuff I did 100% chicken yes check out the pitch from all the big brands sure leaves you thinking it's all natural and all just chicken but is it to find out we turn to science Matt Hardin is a technician at Trent University his labs tested meat samples for industry and government how analyzing DNA I'm at which is why we're here well a DNA test tell us how much chicken is actually in the chicken it will give you a rough estimate of a ratio it will give us a rough atman between chicken DNA and a plant DNA plant DNA test won't give us an exact percentage of the amount of chicken in the whole piece of chicken but matt says it's a good indicator this idea then that if you're not getting 100% chicken DNA does that mean that you're not getting 100% actual chicken meat yeah exactly so there be a legitimate chicken in there mixed together with some plant filler yes if there's something else in there besides chicken the DNA test will find it Matt and his team get to work the samples we're testing grilled chicken breasts drilled strips and this oven roasted chicken while we wait for the lab results back at CDC we're setting up another test a taste test [Music] it's a chicken challenge we're bringing you taste testers to judge this chicken let's meet them lunchtime baby let's go Wilma hood is serious about subway cucumbers and black olive pretty well always chicken that little wiener less fat no sugar in it you're getting a little better quality than they you know are typical best we've seen like McDonald's will trust he's getting the real deal chicken dissect that it's going to be 100% chicken breast and that's lunch boat [Music] what you guys want to see MacDonald fast-food gives this busy mom a break they have the girls chicken Bruce Rose Heron feels better about chicken around yes grilled chicken and so does her son Daniel thinks the chicken burgers a healthier option not as much sodium and all that bad stuff in it if there's any fast food better that when you pick it tonight I'm ready for a snack I ran as the line cast likes to treat herself her go to Wendy love the drug chicken sandwich you know controls in a fresh no surface i Rena has high blood pressure so she's careful I'm watching salt the fat content our taste test is about to get started sampling template our judges are standing by outside our studio instance Elissa here to spice things up Toronto chef rod Bowers welcome to our Test Kitchen thank you and to fill us in on the nutrition facts registered dietitian Christy Brissette rod we're also going to have you put a little twist into this competition what we want you to do is cook off some chicken we're going to see if our testers can spot the home cooked chicken from the fast-food chicken I got to bring my gourmet exam again do it make it happen I'm going to put a little bit of love in here and it's very simple it's just you know what it's actually just some dried herbs a little bit of salt that's all you need right well take a look at your competition here these are our samples I think I am well out in front of this chicken game to keep this taste test blind and unbiased for stripping it down only we know the brand behind the buns well all of our samples have been undressed but there's still one place that's looking for a little love I'm ready come on bring it on all right final sample is in you guys ready to meet the testers let's do it for them all all right hey Chester come on down Rose Daniel will and I ran out all fast foodies about to find out what they're in for welcome welcome you guys are here for the chicken taste test challenge are you guys off for the challenge yeah you can chicken all right we start with sample a large and W take right in tender tender yeah I don't know thought yeah mine was more rubbery I found it a lot rubber is your library no my stress there you are thank you next up McDonald's this one with Zeus here I find mine a bit stringy stringy okay you have a great bit what's up seems to be juice here here comes Subway's first sample I rent a space and priceless what are you watchin err I ran over you thinkin is it real they're real okay it looks like the grill marks are there just to make it look like you will get to the bottom of those grill marks later very salty it's all changed let's see about the next subway item now example D is actually one of our first chicken strips that we're going to take a look at the pieces I have looked real I'd ever think they're a good chicken [Music] okay this is the first one it tasted a little more seasoned the owners have been a lot cleaner for me it tasted like more flavor than it did actual chicken it sort of specialized it's not chicken to me I think it took too much salt for me what will they say about Tim Hortons [Music] okay it tasted more like chicken because of the stringiness and well what did you think about this one how that didn't taste real at all I found it very rubbery like I didn't taste any real kick nil mm-hmm as I was chewing it I wasn't sure that it was chicken top crowd lookout chef rod we're going to start clicking but right now here's Wendy another flavor dad should say I think this is very good it was and I just feel that I tasted lemon didn't love the taste birthday tasted almost like sanitized even though I didn't find the flavor in not good it tastes like it's more real and not too artificial when things are artificial they taste a lot better than surreal oh dear oh dear is right what will Daniel think about the chef's home cooked chicken so here we go sample G these grill marks was possibly real will our top chef get top marks that was juicy I love this natural flavoring I found mine a little tougher to cut I think with that being said though it tasted real I found it a bit salty salty okay yes and rose I'm very comparable to the one previous either one of those I think this is choices now that you've tasted these seven pieces did anybody have a particular favorite cost between F and G G tasted the realest uh-huh my favorite was G even though it was a bit more salty I'm going to go with F even though G was close that's two to one for chef I Rena has the deciding vote will it be chef or Wendy's my kids would mine g g was your favorite okay juicy it's thin and it's flavorful so we do have a little secret oh so one of our samples was actually prepared by chef rod does anyone want to guess which one it was probably you're all going to go with G and we were able to spot the home cooked chicken nice job chef and now the least-favorite see visually looks like fabricated I wouldn't touch it okay she was scary that do you know okay I'm will was there one that you just have to agree with it just rose and Daniel agreed to it just takes the real off but I didn't really even have much live in that way takes a big hit on this chicken challenge and not over yet which one of these pieces of chicken had the least amount of chicken in it we expected 100% kickin the lab results are in misleading got a company that branded itself to help your friend this is your marketplace which changing you think uses the least amount of chicken send me a tweet at CBC charlie fast-food chicken coming right after we're testing popular fast-food chicken sandwiches looks like chicken it's not chicken to me sort of tastes like chicken according to our judges I found it very rubbery so everyone's wondering how much chicken is really in your chicken remember that's the meat mystery we asked this DNA lab to solve such a small lovely bunch of it Trent University's lab has been testing and retesting our samples for months we have results yes they're in what did you find in our chicken test motor sample came back very close to hundred percent chicken except for two we have some more news for you so it turns out that not all of the samples that you've had in front of you are 100% chicken what kind of filler feelings would it be what else would it be that's a great question any guesses everybody as to which one of these pieces of chicken had the least amount of chicken in it I'm going to see oh yeah big time are they right hmm not quite but close sample d our dnh has shows it could be less than 50% chicken Wow you're kidding and sample C well our DNA test shows it's only slightly more than 50% chicken and who makes both C and D that way chicken oh oh like is for LC choice that's misrepresentation we expected 100% kickin subways chicken samples have the least amount of chicken DNA and the most amount of fillers compared to the others you're getting these inexpensive fillers that aren't as nutritious for you previously other said roll great Subway's on it that's a pretty good choice you know you don't feel bad but not any more misleading we've got a company that's branded itself the healthy alternative so what does the sandwich giant have to say for months we've been asking subway questions about their chicken we sent them our DNA results got no clear answers we ask for an on-camera interview they decline now they question our science but say they're concerned and they're checking with suppliers to make sure their chicken meets their standards but we still have questions so we track down a food scientist who knows the industry hi men hello thanks for having me at the University of Guelph Ben Boyer specializes in processed meat so these are samples you want to take a look yeah he's filling us in on how he thinks fast-food chicken strips could be made this is likely a restructured type of product potentially restructured means binding pieces of meat together and then forming it into one piece they stick them together they kind of use some non meat ingredients to add value to those products okay add value translation costs less and what are those non meat ingredients we got them straight from the company website we put them together in one long list in no particular order [Music] we share it with our fast-food ease they expected just chicken but our DNA test shows subway could only be half that I don't know what wives are it's almost like a chemistry class not a cooking class dietician Christy Brissette is not so surprised many of the ingredients were refined starches or different names for sugar lots of different names for types of sodium different salt combinations but been said according to Health Canada they're all safe and approved a lot of these to be honest you can find insufficient as well sodium phosphate I do not have and like it so hard what does that do it's particularly important if you're going to freeze some of these products it helps the chicken retain water keeps a juicy there's very tight regulations with sodium phosphate why is that so so that's just to make sure that it's a wholesome and safe product ok is there a danger with sodium no there's certainly no more no more danger than any other type of salt well Christie's not so certain I think these are going to be the trans fats of the future the research has shown us so far that when you have higher levels of these phosphates in your blood they're at a higher risk of you know cardiac disease kidney issues they are included in amounts that are approved by Health Canada that are determined to be safe but we don't know the long-term impacts of them on our bodies and on our health we'll go sodium phosphate next sodium phosphates are used in all the recipes except for Wendy's and we're going to be mixing this together you can kind of see we're already starting to kind of form a oh it's like getting like a chili yeah and something that subway adds that the other samples don't soy protein why would you need to put more protein in chicken products a lot of great binding capabilities potentially improved texture those type of things and in some sense that also makes the product slightly more cost effective okay so cheaper yes exactly okay remember our DNA test shows subway strips and oven roasted chicken could be only about 50% chicken and guess what the rest mostly soy so there's very likely they're probably making more of a product that contains this ground chicken and forming it into a patty yep then zinc ground chicken breast meat is formed to look like this let's just flip this over flip it over and we'll see these grill marks here okay surely the food scientist knows about those grill marks what did he also tell you there's probably some sort of oven or grill type of system that they run a lot of these sandwiches through and get a very consistent grill mark design on me but even he's not sure so after some digging we think we've solved the grill mark secrets according to a former employee and a processing plant Dave grill marks are actually seared onto the patty after it's already cooked and they're pretty much just for show the chicken challenge continues from a sodium perspective you might as well eat a big portion of nutrition shake down this is your market place dead market place in your inbox once a week sign up for our newsletter at cbc.ca slash marketplace the ultimate chicken challenge our grilled chicken sandwich test isn't over yet to find out how the nutrition shakes down we send more samples to a different lab how does the fast-food compared to home cooked chicken nutritionist and registered dietitian Christy Brissette analyzes the results and gives us the lowdown how many grams of carbohydrate do you think are in our home cooked chicken zero zero right chicken as a protein many of the ingredients were refined starches or different names for sugar that are being added to your chickens chicken breast should not have any carbohydrates in it whatsoever and it's not the type of carbohydrates that we want now you probably do want protein but fast-food chicken 1/4 less than home cooks and when we looked at the sodium amount that completely blew my mind compared to the home cooked chicken the fast-food chicken had between 7 to 10 times the amount of sodium and get this Subway's oven roasted has the most sodium but the least subway strips when you're eating the entire sandwich two-thirds of your daily limit of salt so from a sodium perspective you might as well eat a big portion of poutine the message is that those companies are portraying it sounds like you're taking it straight from a farm and it's just a fresh piece of meat you know no manufacturing process to it and then it shows up on a sandwich they put this health halo over these chicken sandwiches where they seem virtuous they seem angelic and people think they're doing themselves a favor and making a healthier choice there's not the pure virtuous chicken that's coming from the farm to your plate last question does anybody feel like chicken tonight maybe if I was good okay will eating chicken ever be the same next week on marketplace how not to get ripped off who's in charge of that getting tourists be it is a mandatory snooze for this location which sneaky it's shady it's deceiving we've been under covers quite now it's gotten worse something will kick up - 50 don't fall for it and busting sky-high Hospital TV charges whitey - charged 17 dollars a day for a TV are you plugging the cable the way you go another tax on this dick [Music]

Channel: CBC News

Views: 3,947,667

Rating: 4.6178346 out of 5

Keywords: CBC News, CBCNews, CBC broadcasting media, public broadcasting, news, Canadian News, Canadian Broadcasting Corportation (TV network), CBC News Network, chicken, grillled chicken, chicken nuggets, fast food, burgers, cbc marketplace, marketplace cbc, marketplace, diet, nutrition, healthy, carbs, protein

Id: xd3Trr8Xrdc

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/FattyCorpuscle]

Eat mor sawdust.

[u/nzcapybara]

Canadian and american subways. Its all turkey. For some reason... Idk about the tuna and bacon and I dont know why turkey is simpler for them then chicken but its all around not just canada.

[u/[deleted]]

If Candian chicken strips aren’t mostly candy I’d want my money back.

[u/theBU3NO]

How much chicken is a normal piece of chicken considered to be chicken? I assume they're counting water as not chicken. I probably should have watched the video I'm sorry.

[u/thestyrofoampeanut]

this post is getting radically controversial votes. there have been hundreds of votes, but the final number always hovers between 20 and 30.

[u/A-wild-comment]

Since when did subway start selling chicken strips? I know they don't sell Italian dressing in all states, but chicken strips?