So, in this clip of Jamie Oliver’s new television show, he demonstrates to the kids how processed foods are supposed to be awful and terrible.
He cuts up a chicken, removing all the normal chicken parts, and is left with a carcass. He tosses it into a food processor and turns the carcass into a paste. He puts it through a sieve to remove any really big parts of bone and gristle, and then he adds flavorings and stabilizers … they sort of look like flour and chicken soup mix … forms them into patties, covers them with bread crumbs and puts them in a frying pan. Then he asks the kids if they still want to eat it. Their reaction seems to surprise him. The kids say that they would still eat the bogus chicken nuggets.
And why not? In this age of recycling, and over-population, why shouldn’t it be acceptable to eat all of the “nasty bits,” especially if you can make it more palatable? Of course, he’s very careful to point out, in the voice-over, that this isn’t the way chicken nuggets are allowed to be made in this country. The implication, though, is that other countries — England? — might allow this sort of thing to go on.
They say that the pig is a magical creature. That everything can be used for food except for the oink. In other countries, they eat all sorts of parts of all sorts of animals that our culture has been taught to shun. Aside from whatever is in the stabilizers and the flavorings that he added, I can’t really see anything wrong with making the stuff most people would toss away into something useful and edible. (Even if, I must admit, I’m not sure I’d be willing to eat it.)
