Good morning.
We’ve a ninety-percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms, on a day with a high of seventy-five.
On this day in 1947, Pres. Truman delivers the first televised presidential speech, from the White House:
President Harry S. Truman and several cabinet members, including Secretary of State George C. Marshall, asked Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays, and poultry and eggs on Thursdays, to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.
The New York Times reported the next day that the goal was to create a surplus of grain which, instead of being used to feed animals, could provide emergency food relief to Europe: “Food from the United States,” Secretary Marshall said, “would deter the march of hunger, cold and collapse, not only enabling Europe to recover its economic stability, but also contributing to the resolution of a crisis that could mean the difference between the failure or attainment of world peace and security.”
As for food, of the kind many eat today, an evergreen question lingers: what the heck is inside a Chicken McNugget? Here’s what:
Recently, Mississippi researchers found out why: two nuggets they examined consisted of 50 percent or less chicken muscle tissue, the breast or thigh meat that comes to mind when a customer thinks of “chicken.”
The nuggets came from two national fast food chains in Jackson. The three researchers selected one nugget from each box, preserved, dissected and stained the nuggets, then looked at them under a microscope.
The first nugget was about half muscle, with the rest a mix of fat, blood vessels and nerves. Close inspection revealed cells that line the skin and internal organs of the bird, the authors write in the American Journal of Medicine.
The second nugget was only 40 percent muscle, and the remainder was fat, cartilage and pieces of bone.
“We all know white chicken meat to be one of the best sources of lean protein available and encourage our patients to eat it,” lead author Dr. Richard D. deShazo of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, said.
“What has happened is that some companies have chosen to use an artificial mixture of chicken parts rather than low-fat chicken white meat, batter it up and fry it and still call it chicken,” deShazo told Reuters Health.
“It is really a chicken by-product high in calories, salt, sugar and fat that is a very unhealthy choice. Even worse, it tastes great and kids love it and it is marketed to them.”
Recently I was in an afternoon rush and, being hungry, tried McDonald’s “Mighty Wings.” They were mighty bad. Certainly nowhere as good as Culver’s, KFC, or Popeye’s.