I just saw the Good Eats episode about Chicken and the difference between Free Range and organic and typical commericial chicken. I learned a few things... probably the most exciting was how to butterfly a chicken and roast it on top of vegetables in 30 minutes! But equally exciting was the news that commercial growers don't use hormones or steroids on their chickens, it is, in fact illegal. It'd probably be a waste of money too since they mature very quickly anyway, due to breeding, and really only live a few months.

They also talked about the color of the skin on chickens. The reason they have a yellow skin is because someone decided that consumers like yellow skinned chickens better, so they put marigold petals in the chicken feed.

Posted this in war zone because I felt it might stir a debate.

So if I eat marigolds, will I get yellow skin?

Thanks for the info! Chicken in this country is still a kind of interesting topic.

If you look at the bags of pre-frozen chicken (the 'ice glazed' ones), they usually say something like "INJECTED WITH A SOLUTION OF WATER, DEXTROSE, AND SALT." So a lot of people on the very low-carb plans, like Atkins, are wary of that, which is fine.

I generally avoid the very cheap chicken at my local store; I live in the PNW, and the cheapest chicken (giant packs of legs, thighs) is usually labeled "Southern Grown." That means it was probably from one of those Tyson places in Arkansas, or something, and it just seems to me that I'd rather buy chicken from a farm in Oregon or Washington. Foster Farms has farms up here, and there's another one that's quite local.

What's really interesting is, I recently read an excellent book called So Many Enemies, So Little Time about an American teaching in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan , Central Asia.
The author bought a whole chicken and found it was totally inedible. Stringy and tough, it never got more tender, but just shrank. Going back to the market, she found they sold only whole chickens or legs. The legs for sale seemed huge compared to the small, stringy whole chickens. They even had rotisseries cooking just the legs. She asked around, and finally got the story:



I was rereading A Cook's Tour recently, and he says something negative about how Americans only eat "fluffy white chicken breasts" and waste so much, but hey, look how people benefitted from our plenty.

Probably. My art prof's toddler daughter ate so many carrots her nose had an orange tinge to it. It's not impossible.

Edit to add link: http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/educati...x.html?quid=592

Yep. The dye in those marigolds (a.k.a. calendula officinalis) is good ol' beta carotene. Consuming excess beta carotene can cause hypercarotenemia ... and yellow skin.


Doreen

Great link


Doreen

That's an interesting story. Several years ago I had something called smoked turkey tails. They were OK, a little fatty for me, but they had an interesting flavor. Once I started low carbing I got a craving for them, but couldn't find them anywhere -- no store within a 50 mile radius of me sells them, or had any idea of anyone who did. I did a little research and discovered that the U.S. sells its turkey tails to impoverished countries, and in some places they have become delicacies. I can't buy them here, where they are produced, because they are being shipped overseas. Kind of odd how that works out.

That means that those people who don't eat chicken skin are avoiding a good source of beta carotene.

Costco has Foster Farms, and the Oly food coop has locally grown organic/free range chicken.

I never understood this. White meat is so dry and flavorless compared to dark. Well, they can have it, and that preference for white meat keeps prices down on the good stuff.

Wyv

Well, I confess to having eaten Chicken Feet at a chinese restaurant serving Dim Sum. Hey, I figure if all those Chinese like it, it must be good.

I suspect there isn't enough dextrose in the chicken meat to be that huge of a problem. If you look at the total carbs on frozen chicken, its very low.

One thing they said is that chicken tastes entirely different now than it used to. In fact, the phrase "tastes like chicken" oddly wouldn't apply to old fashioned chickens.

I think 50 years ago, or more, the chicken lived a lot longer before being slaughtered, they probably lived on plant shoots, scraps and bug (boy, chickens LOVE to eat bugs!). In fact, when I was a kid, my parents slaughtered our baby chicks... well, after they grew into hens and stopped laying reliably. And they tasted decidedly different from store chicken. In fact, I didn't like the taste. I don't know if that was influenced by the fact that I was emotionally attached to our hens or what.

My hands used to have an orangish cast from all the carrot juice my mom made us drink.

Ah! There's a reason I won't buy some of the commercial chickens... I think Tyson farms was the one... I have heard they use lots of illegal immigrant labor in their factories.

Yes you will.If you eat too many beets you will pee red too.!!

There used to be some kind of fake tanning product in pill form - IIRC it was just a big dose of carotene.

Wyv

Hormones are as you say illegal (here too) but what you should be looking for is antibiotics - these are widely used in commercial farms - not for the chicken's health (or yours) so much as to promote unnatural rates of growth - which allow much earlier "processing". Antibiotic fed poultry can grow so fast that they are unable to walk.

So ideally you want true free range - a subject in itself - antibiotic and hormone free - and, if possible the free range food (grass and insects) supplemented with fish meal and/or flax seed (for better PUFA ratio) - as unless you get your poultry from a small old fashioned farm - "free range" will still be essentially grain or corn fed (very limited access, if any, to grass or insects).

Cheers,

Malcolm

Well, when it comes to eggs, you can tell whether they are truly free-range. I always buy the happy-chicken eggs; some are grain-fed, some are free-range.

You can tell by the yolk. A truly free-range chicken who eats bugs will lay an egg with an incredibly bright, nearly orange yolk. A grain-fed chicken is paler.

In fact, back in the day when eggs were regularly used as a binder in painting, when painting flesh tones of a man, painters would use a "country egg," for the ruddier tones it would give, and a "city egg" for paler, more delicate female skin tones.

There are eggs sold that claim a higher level of good fats. I've gotten those from time to time, but I don't look for them or anything. What we actually care about is, most of the happy-chicken eggs are grade A. There is one local brand that is grade AA, and that's what we get (cage free, not organic). Egg grades are totally based on freshness, and I have no clue why most of them are grade A).


Wyvrn, Fred Meyer carries some Coastal Organics chicken, but they don't always have it. And Top Foods carries a local farm's chicken. They sell a nice big tub of wing drummettes for makin' those hot wings. Yeah, I go to CostCo and stock up on meat and chicken, and got some really nice Copper River sockeye salmon last time.

The light/dark meat thing puzzles me...as a kid I loved dark meat, but currently I prefer white meat, although I'll eat dark meat. I keep hoping I'll get more of a taste for dark meat again. And, of course, I love the skin. I don't care if it's yellow or not.