“Chicken nuggets are a food I would never feed my kids,” TikTok creator @thehealthywife In a video this spring that has more than 50,000 likes, she carefully places raw chicken breasts in a food processor. “It’s because I prioritize their health over convenience.”
That means making chicken snacks like nuggets from scratch, no matter how messy or time-consuming that may be. When she measures out scoops of pulverized chicken, dredges them in her own breading mix, and fries them in schmaltze, she’s working on one of the biggest contradictions in contemporary food culture: Americans love chicken nuggets, and we hate ourselves for buying them. Eating and serving our children.
Selling frozen nuggets Topping $2 billion Last year nationwide, and global demand is only expected to increase, bring an estimate $46.5 billion By 2032.
“It crosses class lines, it crosses racial lines, it crosses age groups. Everyone eats or feeds their family chicken nuggets,” said Kayla Wajana Tompkins, a professor of global gender and sexuality studies at the University at Buffalo who studies food and eating. .
But the ubiquitous little blobs of protein have also been widely reviled as a lazy shortcut, a Highly processed foods Want to be responsible for anything from everything Childhood obesity Alzheimer’s disease (never mind Lack of research)
“Chicken nuggets have become a keyword for neglecting your kids,” says Tompkins.
Parents have plenty of valid reasons to feed their kids nuggets — they’re cheap, they’re quick, and kids love them to begin with. But the shame that seems to adhere to their crunchy, golden crust says a lot about the expectations placed on parents, and especially mothers, to feed their children fresh, whole foods in an economic and social environment that makes it punishingly difficult.
Chicken nuggets are a reminder of the ways in which American food culture has “taken our choices away from us,” Tompkins said. They are “delicious and questionable.”
The birth of chicken nuggets
The modern chicken nugget owes its existence to a man named Robert Baker, a poultry scientist at Cornell University who, in the 1960s, set out to help chicken farmers make more money by finding uses for all the “little bits and bobs.” Don’t sell yourself,” says Emmeline Rudd, a historian and author Taste Like Chicken: A History of America’s Favorite Bird. He figured out how to assemble these once-unwanted chicken pieces, then bread, fry, freeze and reheat them to create a whole new kind of meal.
Groundbreaking as it was, Baker’s “Chicken Sticks” Hasn’t really taken off with American eaters. That wouldn’t happen until the early 80s, when a McDonald’s chef named René Arendt, originally from Luxembourg, created the McNugget (McDonald’s said There is no record of contact between Arendt and Baker, although Baker shared her recipes freely). Launched across the country In 1983Creation has taken the country by storm, with 5 million pounds in sales every week during the first 12 weeks of the rollout.
Within about a year, every fast-food chain had a McNugget copycat, he said Patrick Dixonis a research analyst and author at Georgetown University’s Kalmanwitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor; Upcoming books Gold Nuggets: More Processed Chicken and the Making of the American Diet. Bagged chicken nuggets were available in grocery stores shortly thereafter.
Chicken nuggets sparked a wave of anti-beef sentiment in the 1980s, 1977 Government Report Urging Americans to eat less red meat, Rudd said.
Chicken, even if it’s breaded and fried, is seen as a “lighter option,” Dixon said. It was also cheaper due to the rise in beef prices in the 1970s.
But perhaps the biggest secret to chicken nuggets’ appeal is also the simplest: they’re delicious. Unlike other McDonald’s innovations (unfortunately Onion nuggetsFor example), chicken nuggets fascinate Americans with their bland yet delectable taste.
The nugget backlash begins
The reaction, however, begins almost immediately. At first, commentators lightly poked fun at nuggets as the new junk food. They have become symbols of emptiness – all filler and no substance. A 1986 Wall Street Journal article even used a McNugget analogy to illuminate political news coverage, arguing that Americans were getting cut-up, over-processed sound bites instead of meaty discussions of the issues.
In the 1990s, however, growing panic about obesity led to sharper criticism, Dixon said. “Instead of ‘this is stupid’ or ‘this is rubbish’, ‘this is a threat to the health of the nation'”
As the book was published in the 2000s, the chorus of critics grew louder Fast Food Nation and the release of the film Super size mBoth of which accused chains like McDonald’s of making Americans fat and unhealthy.
In 2011Chef and TV personality Jamie Oliver even Tried to annoy A group of kids showing how chicken nuggets are made (it didn’t work – the kids still wanted to eat them).
Concerns are growing about today Processed foods and its appearance DIY tradewife culture And TikTok wellness influencers, anti-nugget rhetoric typically focuses less on obesity and more on allegedly harmful ingredients. A Popular format “Stop eating chemicals.” Influencer @thehealthywife says she makes her own chicken nuggets from scratch to avoid ingredients like vegetable oil, though Lack of evidence no damage
But even among parents who wouldn’t dream of spending all day grinding chicken, there’s a general perception that heating up a plate of nuggets for kids represents failure. This is especially true for mothers, who face an extra level of judgment over the food their children eat. “Our idea of what makes someone a good mom is really intricately tied to how they feed their kids, in a way that’s not necessarily the case for dads,” said Priya Fielding-SinghA sociologist and author of the book How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Equality in America.
“Mothers are told to feed their babies whole foods, unprocessed foods, limit their sugar, limit their sodium,” Fielding-Singh said. The mothers she spoke to for her book “generally had feelings of guilt, like they weren’t doing enough.”
What the Nugget Debate Says About America
Blaming moms for serving chicken nuggets ignores larger issues at play, experts say.
For low-income families, foods like nuggets can be a reliable source of joy when other sources are out of reach. The low-income parents she interviewed were used to saying “no” to their children many times a day, but “food was one of the few things they could say yes to,” Fielding-Singh said. “There are few other things in life that you can buy your kids that they really like and that give instant gratification.”
Chicken nuggets are also a food that many children will reliably eat, a major concern for families who can’t afford to waste food, Fielding-Singh said. Meanwhile, many neurodivergent people – children And adults – Appreciate the predictability of processed foods like nuggets.
There is also the problem of timing. With dual income families Increasing ideals — and work hours are often long and unpredictable — few families have someone at home during the day who can reliably prepare a complicated meal.
“We like to think of convenience foods as a band-aid to the problem of people not having enough time to prepare the food they want to eat,” said Marcia Chatelainis a professor of African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and an author Franchise: Black America’s Golden Arches.
And instead of blaming parents for feeding their kids processed chicken, Fielding-Singh says, we should focus on the forces that “work against parents helping them provide a nutritious diet for their children,” including aggressive food-industry marketing, inadequate SNAP allocations, and lack of access to whole foods.
However we think about the chicken nugget and its role in American family life, one thing is certain: The nugget itself isn’t going anywhere. Since Robert Baker’s “Chicken Stick,” processed chicken products have only increased, Dino shaped nuggetsNuggets Coated with cauliflowerAnd even high-end versions Top with caviar.
Rood said chickens are cheap to raise, easy to transport and tasty for foods around the world. “I just envision a very smooth future for all of us.”
