Most folks assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know, for example, that a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is 56% corn?
What else is in a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget? Besides corn, and to a lesser extent, chicken, The Omnivore’s Dilemma describes all of the thirty-eight ingredients that make up a McNugget – one of which I’ll bet you’ll never guess. During this part of the book, the author has just ordered a meal from McDonald’s with his family and taken one of the flyers available at McDonald’s called “A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts: Choose the Best Meal for You.”
The ingredients listed in the flyer 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 leeches 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 price and availability.
According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food 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 nugget 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 fry. 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 butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside 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 food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 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.
There you have it – lighter fluid. But you never thought that was in your chicken McNuggets!
Eat Up America..MickeyD's is selling you the Good Ole American Heart attack! THIS is one of many many reasons One will NEVER see me eat FAST FOOD! It's just a faster way to kill us. Oh that's right, we BUY it..Again, another dumbing down of America.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
Court rules against Bush in global warming case
Mon Apr 2, 5:52 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that U.S. environmental officials have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.
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By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court told the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.
The high court ruled that such greenhouse gases from motor vehicles fall within the law's definition of an air pollutant.
The ruling in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court marked the first high court decision in a case involving global warming.
President George W. Bush has opposed mandatory controls on greenhouse gases as harmful to the U.S. economy, and the administration instead has called for voluntary programs.
In 2003, the EPA refused to regulate the emissions, saying it lacked the power to do so. Even if it had the power, the EPA said it would be unwise to do it and would impair Bush's ability to negotiate with developing nations to cut emissions.
The states and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit hailed the ruling.
"As a result of today's landmark ruling, EPA can no longer hide behind the fiction that it lacks any regulatory authority to address the problem of global warming," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.
Greenhouse gases occur naturally and also are emitted by cars, trucks and factories into the atmosphere. They can trap heat close to Earth's surface like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
STEEP RISE
Such emissions have risen steeply in the past century and many scientists see a connection between the rise, an increase in global average temperatures and a related increase in extreme weather, wildfires, melting glaciers and other damage to the environment.
Democrats in Congress predicted the ruling could add pressure on lawmakers to push forward with first-ever caps on carbon dioxide emissions. The United States is the world's biggest emitter of such gases.
The ruling also could make it easier for California and 13 other states to put in place mandatory emission caps, officials in that state said.
Writing for the court majority, Justice
John Paul Stevens said the EPA's decision in 2003 was "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law."
In sending the case back for further proceedings, Stevens said the EPA could avoid regulation only if it determined that the gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provided a reasonable explanation.
Stevens said the EPA could not avoid its legal obligation by noting the scientific uncertainty surrounding some features of climate change and concluding it would be better not to regulate at this time.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said of the ruling, "We're going to have to take a look and analyze it and see where we go from there."
The EPA said the administration was committed to reducing greenhouse gases and it was "reviewing the court's decision to determine the appropriate course of action."
The court's four most conservative members -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice
Samuel Alito, both Bush appointees, and Justices
Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas -- dissented.
They said the environmental groups and the states lacked the legal right to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
"No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency," Scalia wrote.
(Additional reporting by Chris Baltimore)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that U.S. environmental officials have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.
ADVERTISEMENT
By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court told the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.
The high court ruled that such greenhouse gases from motor vehicles fall within the law's definition of an air pollutant.
The ruling in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court marked the first high court decision in a case involving global warming.
President George W. Bush has opposed mandatory controls on greenhouse gases as harmful to the U.S. economy, and the administration instead has called for voluntary programs.
In 2003, the EPA refused to regulate the emissions, saying it lacked the power to do so. Even if it had the power, the EPA said it would be unwise to do it and would impair Bush's ability to negotiate with developing nations to cut emissions.
The states and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit hailed the ruling.
"As a result of today's landmark ruling, EPA can no longer hide behind the fiction that it lacks any regulatory authority to address the problem of global warming," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.
Greenhouse gases occur naturally and also are emitted by cars, trucks and factories into the atmosphere. They can trap heat close to Earth's surface like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
STEEP RISE
Such emissions have risen steeply in the past century and many scientists see a connection between the rise, an increase in global average temperatures and a related increase in extreme weather, wildfires, melting glaciers and other damage to the environment.
Democrats in Congress predicted the ruling could add pressure on lawmakers to push forward with first-ever caps on carbon dioxide emissions. The United States is the world's biggest emitter of such gases.
The ruling also could make it easier for California and 13 other states to put in place mandatory emission caps, officials in that state said.
Writing for the court majority, Justice
John Paul Stevens said the EPA's decision in 2003 was "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law."
In sending the case back for further proceedings, Stevens said the EPA could avoid regulation only if it determined that the gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provided a reasonable explanation.
Stevens said the EPA could not avoid its legal obligation by noting the scientific uncertainty surrounding some features of climate change and concluding it would be better not to regulate at this time.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said of the ruling, "We're going to have to take a look and analyze it and see where we go from there."
The EPA said the administration was committed to reducing greenhouse gases and it was "reviewing the court's decision to determine the appropriate course of action."
The court's four most conservative members -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice
Samuel Alito, both Bush appointees, and Justices
Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas -- dissented.
They said the environmental groups and the states lacked the legal right to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
"No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency," Scalia wrote.
(Additional reporting by Chris Baltimore)
Living in my own little magical world.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm just bored. So off I go into lala land, my very own little Highland before the Pylon Castle. lol..Eerily soothing. Hey it's my fantasy..
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Dumbing down of America AGAIN..
And it took 1st at the box office this weekend. For the love of God, would people STOP going to these stupid ass movies. It's that Blades of Glory. Who in their right mind would even think of finding this movie amusing?! No, don't tell me, its the stupid people. Yep got that. What's worse is that I rented a couple of movies tonight, one being Children of Men with Clive Owen, which really sucked. Very very slow..I continued to wait for 55 minutes for SOMETHING to come to life, show a stronger side of this storyline, NOPE..Yeah, I'm asking for money back.
I think I'm about to change skins..I'm sooo bored with TV, Computers, Life..Its a rut thing. Just stuck, feed up and bored with generalities of life. Tv is a massive bore these days. Even my favorites Discovery and A&E are killing me. Yes, I know it's just me, eh.
The sadder side:Missing Minnesota boys found dead.Young brothers had been missing since Nov. 22..
The boys were found about a half-mile from where they lived. Authorities have not determined whether foul play was involved, Boelter said...
More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17905416/
I think I'm about to change skins..I'm sooo bored with TV, Computers, Life..Its a rut thing. Just stuck, feed up and bored with generalities of life. Tv is a massive bore these days. Even my favorites Discovery and A&E are killing me. Yes, I know it's just me, eh.
The sadder side:Missing Minnesota boys found dead.Young brothers had been missing since Nov. 22..
The boys were found about a half-mile from where they lived. Authorities have not determined whether foul play was involved, Boelter said...
More at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17905416/
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