Chicken is touted as one of the best forms of protein, particularly for those who prefer meat protein to casein or whey protein powder. There’s something absolutely wonderful about chicken breast, one of nature’s healthiest, lowest-fat proteins. You can eat a good amount of chicken every day, but without adding too much fat and chemicals into your diet. Chicken plays a central role in any healthy diet, and it’s a delicious meat that is peerless when it comes to versatility in some of the best recipes.
But, it may surprise you to know that chicken could be a danger to your health…
Arsenic in Your Chicken
It seems that the FDA has been hiding the truth about your chicken for decades: it contains arsenic. Every time you take a bite of that delicious chicken breast, chicken leg, or chicken McNugget, you’re ingesting a bit of this dangerous poison.
To make things worse, it seems that you’re eating arsenic that is fed to the chickens ON PURPOSE! The culprit behind the arsenic in the chicken feed is Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant that makes billions of dollars each year on medications.
Arsenic has been fed to chickens since the 1940s, as a means of promoting both growth and weight gain in our feathered friends/meals. They can get away feeding the chickens less, as the arsenic helps them to pack on the pounds without as much food.
Of course, since the American population found out that arsenic was used in chicken feed, there has been an uproar condemning the practice. The arsenic that is absorbed by the chickens was supposed to be excreted in their feces, and the amount of this poisonous chemical fed to the chickens was reported to be at low enough levels that it wouldn’t harm humans. However, the truth is that there are no studies that provide conclusive scientific evidence to back up this statement, and the FDA has basically been hiding their heads in the sand on this issue.
Now, the evidence is mounting that the arsenic in chicken is causing harm to humans. In fact, proof has accumulated to the extent that a Pfizer subsidiary has actually had to pull one of their arsenic-laced chicken feed products off the shelf. That product – named Roxarsone – is off shelves, but it’s still going to be fed to chickens until there are specific regulations passed that ban the use of arsenic-laced chicken feed. Even worse, they’re going to ship it overseas, and sell it to other countries that don’t have the same regulations as the United States does.
As if the arsenic in the chicken meat wasn’t bad enough, the arsenic could be spreading to our beef. Chicken litter is usually gathered from the chicken farms, and that litter is used to feed cows in beef factories. If the arsenic really is excreted from the chickens’ digestive tracts, it means that all of the poison can be found in the litter. Why would we then feed that arsenic-containing offal to the cows, knowing full well that the poison will just spread into the beef as well as the chicken meat? It seems like willful ignorance of the facts of life, and we’re just poisoning ourselves through our negligence.
Thankfully, the FDA has taken steps to deal with the problem. As of late 2013, arsenic was banned from all chicken feed. This means that our chicken should no longer have arsenic in it, and our chicken meat will once again be as healthy as we think it is.
But what will be the next thing in your meat that could kill you? The suspense is terrifying!
