The Chicken McNugget is a small piece of processed chicken meat that is fried in batter and flash-frozen, then shipped out and sold at McDonald's restaurants. It was conceived by Keystone Foods founder Herb Lotman in the late 1970s. McDonald's first executive chef, René Arend, a native from Luxembourg, created the Chicken McNuggets recipe in 1979. "The McNuggets were so well-received that every franchise wanted them", said Arend in a 2009 interview. "There wasn't a system to supply enough chicken". Supply problems were solved by 1983, and Chicken McNuggets became available nationwide in the United States. In Canada, the national release was in late-January 1984. According to McDonald's, the nuggets come in four shapes: the bell, the bow-tie, the ball and the boot. The reason for the four different shapes is to ensure consistent cooking times for food safety. Four shapes were chosen because McDonalds states "The 4 shapes we make Chicken McNuggets in was the perfect equilibrium of dipability and fun. 3 would’ve been too few. 5 would’ve been, like, wacky."
Chicken McNuggets are sold in various portion sizes depending on the country of purchase. In the United States, they come in packs of 4, 6, 10, 20 and 50. In some markets, including the United Kingdom, they are sold in packs of 4, 6, 9 or 20. In New Zealand and Australia, they are also available in 3-packs in Happy Meals and Heart Foundation-approved "Tick healthy" meals. In Canada, Chicken McNuggets are sold in packs of 4, 6, 10, and 20. A 50-piece McNuggets meal deal has been promoted at times for special events such as the NFL's Super Bowl. They have recently been introduced by McDonald's in India, first as a part of its "Breakfast Meal" and later in the regular menu in May 2009. A halal version of the McNuggets have been sold at two franchises in Dearborn, Michigan, beginning in the early 2000s, bringing in double the average McNuggets sales.
Criticism
In a 2002 lawsuit against McDonald's, a judge commented that Chicken McNuggets are a "McFrankenstein" creation. The judge identified that rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan, McNuggets included elements not utilized by the home cook, including unusual sounding ingredients such as extracts of rosemary, vitamins all of which are common in enriched flour, and leavening. The 2004 documentary Super Size Me states that "riginally created from old chickens that can no longer lay eggs, McNuggets are now made from chickens with unusually large breasts. They're stripped from the bone, and ground-up into a sort of 'chicken mash', which is then combined with all sorts of stabilizers and preservatives, pressed into familiar shapes, breaded, deep-fried, freeze-dried, and then shipped to a McDonald's near you." Super Size Me also alleged inclusion of ingredients such as TBHQ, polydimethylsiloxane, and others not used by a typical home cook. This was subsequently restated by CNN. Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of What to Eat, says that the ingredients in McNuggets probably pose no health risks. Before August 2016, dimethylpolysiloxane and TBHQ were listed as ingredients in the McNuggets cooking process. According to Lisa McComb, a media relations representative for McDonald's, dimethylpolysiloxane is used as a matter of safety to keep the frying oil from foaming. A review of animal studies by the World Health Organization found no adverse health effects associated with dimethylpolysiloxane. TBHQ is a common preservative for vegetable oils, cereals, nuts, cookies, chips and animal fats, found in other foods such as Girl Scout Cookies and Quaker Chewy Granola Bars. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sets an upper limit of 0.02% of the oil or fat content in foods, which like other foods, applies to the oil used in McNuggets. Effective use of TBHQ was 1 gram per 5000 grams of cooking oil.
In culture
McNugget numbers
A mathematical problem, discussed on Eric W. Weisstein's MathWorld and Brady Haran's YouTube channel "Numberphile," is that of determining the greatest number of McNuggets which cannot be made from any combination of pack sizes on offer. For example, in the UK, McNuggets are sold in boxes of 6, 9 or 20. Consequently, the greatest number of McNuggets which cannot be purchased exactly is 43, the Frobenius number of the set. This means that all natural numbers greater than 43 can be expressed, in some way, as the sum of some multiple of each of 6, 9, and 20. For example, 139 = + +.
