A little silicone and petrol in your McNuggets?

McDonald’s makes US chicken McNuggets with oil-based chemical and Silly Putty agent.

By Rady Ananda

While the Food Safety police raid raw food co-ops and raw milk farms for selling foods that humans have enjoyed for tens of thousands of years, the US Food and Drug Administration allows giant corporations to sell food adulterated with health-damaging chemicals. McDonald’s chicken McNuggets made news again this summer after a CNN investigation found that England sells a healthier version than what the FDA allows.

In “All McDonald’s nuggets are not created equal,” CNN reports:

“American McNuggets (190 calories, 12 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat for 4 pieces) contain the chemical preservative tBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, a petroleum-based product. They also contain dimethylpolysiloxane …. a form of silicone used in cosmetics and Silly Putty.

“By contrast, British McNuggets (170 calories, 9 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat for 4 pieces) lists neither chemical among its ingredients.”

FDA’s ill treatment of US consumers is not really surprising. The FDA also allowed BP to dump two million gallons of a British-banned toxic oil dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico this summer. Refusing to test for Corexit in the food supply, the FDA declared Gulf seafood safe to eat. Corexit is four times more toxic than oil according to the environmental group, Protect the Oceans. “Oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61 ppm.”

Regarding McNasty McNuggets, CNN noted that:

“TBHQ is a preservative for vegetable oils and animal fats, limited to .02 percent of the oil in the nugget. One gram (1/28 of an ounce) can cause ‘nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse,’ according to ‘A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives.’”

CNN also reports that: “The World Health Organization found no adverse health effects associated with dimethylpolysiloxane.”

WHO is the same organization that conspired with pharmaceutical giants to sell dangerous and unneeded H1N1 flu vaccines last year, as exposed in the prestigious British Medical Journal in June.

Dr. Gary Kohls is one of many safe-food advocates who warns us, “If you can’t pronounce the ingredients on the label, don’t eat it.”

McDonald’s came under fire for its McNugget ingredients in a 2002 obesity lawsuit. The film “Super Size Me” noted that a federal judge called them “a McFrankenstein creation of various elements not utilized by the home cook.”  CNN comments: “Among the ingredients that remained in the new McNuggets: tBHQ and dimethylpolysiloxane.”

Dr. William Campbell Douglass also weighed in on the FDA-approved food. “I’m impressed by the Chicken McNugget. I wouldn’t put one near my mouth, but it’s an absolute marvel of engineering — I counted 37 ingredients just in the ‘chicken’ and the ‘breaded’ coating, and another seven ingredients in the vegetable oil used to cook it.”

In a lecture before scientists at the Centers for Disease Control last year, real food advocate Michael Pollan warned of the dangers of  “food-like substances [that contain] more than five ingredients.”

If the FDA approves it, you can bet some corporation stands to make a fortune. Better to trust food that humans evolved with over millennia than a corrupt governmental agency in service to profits.