> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them
At 2 years old my son could blind taste test tell the difference between my neighbor's chicken's eggs and store bought eggs.
He refused to eat eggs (still doesn't) until we convinced him to try one of the eggs from our neighbor's chicken's. He liked that egg. Every time we've tried to pass (fancy!) store eggs off to him as our neighbor's eggs he's called us out for lying to him.
He'll reliably eat eggs from the chickens across the street and nowhere else.
So yes, there is a difference in taste!
I think you demonstrated that eggs taste different, but not better.
My 2 year old would only prefer to eat frozen chicken nuggets. That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.
> That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.
My kids prefer nuggets over the whole roast chicken my wife and I eat. The salt, MSG, and seasoning of the nuggets along with the fat from the oil tastes better to them. Sadly, nothing I say will convince them otherwise.
Try making nuggets from scratch. It’s so good and easy to do. Chicken tenders from breast meat. Egg seasoned with salt, pepper. Dunk into seasoned breading. Dunk into egg again and back to the breading. Pan fry. Yummy.
Chicken tenders are chicken tenders, not nuggets.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with nuggets. Nobody criticizes Italian meatballs, which are ground-up beef in balls. But then for some reason ground-up chicken in a different shape isn't "real chicken"?!
You’ll find the “ground chicken” in a typical industrially produced chicken nugget to be quite different than the ground meat found in a traditional Italian meatball.
correct, the "ground chicken" is much less wasteful and a more cost effective way to feed the masses with a reduced environmental impact
McNuggets are 45% meat (specifically: Chicken Breast Meat) -- at least they are in the UK, where they have to give out this information. Presumably the US recipe is at least similar.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/product/chicken-mcnuggets...
I'm sure there are many traditional Italian meatball recipes, but as one example, I had an AI convert the US measurements from Chef John's recipe, and it estimated 900g meat and 494g other ingredients, so 65% meat.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/220854/chef-johns-italian-...
Of course the ingredients differ in a lot of other ways than just the percentage of meat. That's just what I looked at.
Will you find it to be different?
Honestly, ground meat is ground meat. What makes you think ground chicken is "quite different"? Why are you putting it in scare quotes? The chicken breasts used to make McNuggets are literally no different from the standard chicken breasts sold at your average grocery store.
And in both cases the ground meat/chicken is mixed with binders and flavorings to keep it together and keep it moist and make it even tastier -- variously including flour, breadcrumbs, water, salt, spices, etc. depending on the recipe.
Obviously nuggets are battered and fried. But then so are traditional Italian delicacies like arancini.
> Will you find it to be different?
Yes.
> Honestly, ground meat is ground meat. What makes you think ground chicken is "quite different"?
Because when people who don't sell chicken nuggets have looked closely, they have found that to be the case.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/11/232106472/wh...
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00396-3/fulltex...
> And in both cases the ground meat/chicken is mixed with binders and flavorings to keep it together and keep it moist and make it even tastier -- variously including flour, breadcrumbs, water, salt, spices, etc. depending on the recipe.
Sure, or textured soy protein concentrate[0] to fill out the meat or soy lecithin [1] to emulsify the unholy mixture
0 https://www.tysonfoodservice.com/products/tyson/chicken/nugg...
1 - https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Fully-Cooked-Chicken-...
My understanding: there actually is some difference in some cases (not saying it's true for McNuggets). But basically, a lot of time, they need special processing techniques to remove the meat close to the bone and this type of meat is then used in products that require ground meat (nuggets, meatballs, sausages, hot dogs).
Not all nuggets are ground, chick fil a nuggets I think are just a chunk of tenderloin or something. But I wouldn't call a fried complete tenderloin a nugget.
I do make fried chicken for them occasionally and I season with a bit of curry, cumin, and smoked paprika.
- 1 pack of 6 thighs or 3 breasts
- 4 tbs corn starch + 1 tsp salt + 1/2 tsp each of curry powder, cumin, smoked paprika to coat
- slice chicken thinly and use a mallet to flatten to make it even and cook faster (this also increases the ratio of breading to chicken which they like)
- coat each slice in the corn starch mix
- beat 2 eggs and then dredge the coated slices in egg
- coat the now egg coated chicken with bread crumbs of your choice
- fry in a flat pan with just about 4-6mm of oil
- about 60-90 seconds each side
You're still going to come back to a child who's learned "Real chicken nuggets come in dinosaur shapes, are very salty, have a uniform breading, and don't require teeth to chew". He's going to think your dish doesn't quality.
Going through the school system (private pre-K/K and public) was really what changed my kids' eating habits. Once they get used to the school nuggets and pizza, it's hard to "unlearn". They were more diverse eaters as young kids and ended more picky and narrow in their food choices. It's why pizza is the staple of every kids' birthday party.
I believe this is a difficult problem for schools. They need to have food that meets the standards (as they are defined), appealing enough to 6 through {age} range to have them eat it, something that can be prepared with relatively low skill demands, and something that can be prepared easily in the quantities needed with the kitchen staff provided.
That really gets down to reheated chicken nuggets, pizza, and other classic school lunches.
The alternative would be to have a school that has a sufficiently large and trained kitchen staff to prepare diverse food, make sure that the food selection that they have meets the requirements (and that the kids aren't just eating the deserts).
I'm recalling back to my school food eating days and the kitchen had four people - two serving, one cooking, one cleaning.
High school had two or three in the cafeteria - and they were constantly putting out the fast food equivalent food items. I can't even remember if there were salads (if there were, I don't think I ever ate them). [Burger, deep fried [fish, shrimp, chicken], French fries] was my lunches for four years.
Though I'm also not entirely sure that schools are to blame for the narrowing of food preference with kids. They don't help, but I'm not entirely sure they are to blame.
100%; I'm not blaming schools, just pointing out to non-parents how this happens. A lot of non-parents don't have the context.
The kids get used to eating it at schools and birthday parties where people go for "safe" choices like pizza.
I, too, remember in my elementary school days in the 80's, that we had real, cafeteria prepared lunches (shep's pie was my favorite). But it was also a small rural school.
> They don't help, but I'm not entirely sure they are to blame.
That is an interesting rabbit hole to go down...
https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2003/10/07/fussy-eating-ma...
> Scientists at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit, University College London, wondered if children were reluctant to eat any unfamiliar foods, or whether they were selectively rejecting certain types – perhaps those most likely to pose a threat to heath. Early in human history, the presence of toxins within many plants made eating fruit and vegetables risky for children, while meat carried a high risk of food poisoning.
That was from 2003... article from the same author in 2005: Age and gender differences in children's food preferences - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15975175/
And the term to look for is Neophobia (related article from 2022 Neophobia—A Natural Developmental Stage or Feeding Difficulties for Children? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9002550/ )
> 4. Causes of Food Neophobia The source of food neophobia can be traced back to evolution when a neophobic attitude protected mammals from consuming potentially poisonous food. As an omnivorous species, to survive, humans had to distinguish between safe and poisonous food. Although this ability has lost its value today, it can still be observed in children around 2 years of age (sometimes earlier), when unfamiliar foods or foods served differently than before cause anxiety in the child, and a relative preference for familiar foods is apparent.
Other nations don't find it difficult. You just throw money at the problem, and the problem goes away. Like most problems.
Deciding that we need to serve food at a minimum of cost with a minimum of staff who is minimally trained according to a minimalistic nutritional guidelines, and charge children for the privilege of choosing to eat, and you aren't getting a feast full of fresh produce.
Japan is a decent model in making meals more communal and spreading the labor requirements around to students so that staff can focus on back of house work, but it starts with a higher budget basis to start with, makes meals mandatory, and provides significant subsidies.
I think it's like the rest of the school experience—your parents are the major influencers here. Our kids like what we like because we've fed them what we eat, from sardines to Sichuan to sushi. They take leftovers to school — cheaper and they don't like most of the cafeteria food anyway.
I mean, no it is not difficult, look at French school menus. You just have to not have the bad options on stock.
Kids eat better in a lower-middle-class area preschool in France than they do in the most expensive daycare in the Bay Area.
US food supply chain is highly, highly industrialized.
I visited Taiwan recently. Small island, semi-tropical with a long growing season. Stuff grows year round. Lots of markets with fresh fruits and veggies so lots of stuff is "local". The supply chain is short.
You go to even a random food stall and it can be just a few steps removed from true "farm to table".
The US is huge (logistical challenges that favor large scale, industrial food handling for economics) and many parts have short growing seasons.
In the US, the schools have Sysco and ConAgra trucks rolling up loading pallets of prepared foods. Depending on where you are, the food prep workers are contracted out to some third party private company. In my children's school -- in a fairly affluent area -- I'd guess that almost all of the food is prepared and heated from a bag.
They do... https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/01/24/no-more-nuggets-schoo...
> ...
> Not many schools can afford gourmet offerings like Mount Diablo’s, which also benefits from California’s year-round growing season. But school menus in several places have improved in the past decade, with fresher ingredients and more ethnic dishes, said School Nutrition Association spokesperson Diane Pratt-Heavner.
> In a national survey of 1,230 school nutritiondirectors, nearly all said the rising costs of food and supplies were their top challenges this year. More than 90% said they were facing supply chain and staffing shortages.
> The survey by the nutrition association also found soaring levels of student lunch debt at schools that have returned to charging for meals. The association is urging Congress to resume free breakfast and lunch nationwide.
> “This is the worst and fastest accumulation of debt I’ve seen in my 12 years in school nutrition,” said Angela Richey, nutrition director for the Roseville and St Anthony-New Brighton school districts in Minnesota, which serve about 9,400 students. They don’t turn away a hungry child, but this year’s school meal debt has surpassed $90,000, growing at a rate of over $1,000 a day.
> Making food from scratch isn’t just healthier, it’s cheaper, many school nutrition directors say.
> But that’s only possible when schools have kitchens. A national shift away from school kitchens began in the 1980s, which ushered in an era of mass-produced, processed school food. Pre-made meals delivered by food service companies meant schools could do away with full-time cafeteria staff and kitchens.
> ...
Los Gatos High School Hires Chef Consultant to Improve Student Meals - https://youtu.be/nMMO9fBWnjc
> That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.
It will depend on whether the whole chicken is chicken proper, or one reassembled from nuggets.
eggs are homogenous in nature, so a blind test between two eggs can reveal the superior quality of one type of homogenous product. Especially when it is an egg, which is entirely "natural"
a chicken nugget is not the same thing as whole chicken, because it has many chemicals, additives, flavouring agents, msg, organ meat, etc and is then battered or crumbed and deep fried before being packed. It also has a different texture altogether, and is eaten with the hands which children find easier than using cutlery.
compare a child tasting two different varieties of dark chocolate in comparison to a milk chocolate with caramel filling, or two varieties of whole milk to chocolate skim milk, et cetera.
You are right. My point wasn’t that chicken and eggs are the same or even similar.
What I wanted to convey is just because kids have a preference for something doesn’t mean it is better. So more a flaw in the syllogism.
Nuggets are mostly skin and cartilage, so maybe that preference stems from the nutritional needs of a growing child.
Where do you get this total misinformation?
You're trying to propagate an urban legend. HN is not the place for that.
What are you referring to? Sure, chicken nuggets made mostly of breast or other muscle flesh exist, but you can bet your buns the majority of frozen nuggets are mostly ground skin and mechanically separated meat.
In the United States, mechanically separated poultry has been used in poultry products since 1969, after the National Academy of Sciences found it safe.
Chicken nuggets are primarily chicken muscle tissue, end of story.
Yes they can include mechanically separated chicken, which is basically a fancy name for saying they scraped all the meat off the bones. But that isn't "mostly skin and cartilage", it's meat. There may be trace amounts of cartilage and small amounts of skin in it, but they are nowhere near the main components.
If you're still not sure, just look at the protein content of chicken nuggets. The quantity of protein can only come from actual chicken muscle. Skin has little protein and cartilage has virtually none.
There are a lot of urban legends out there about what chicken nuggets are made of. But they're precisely that -- urban legends. They're false.
https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/what-are-chicken-nuggets-...
Seriously, do you think researchers are wrong on this?
Yes, actually. Completely wrong. That "study" looked at a sample size of... 2 nuggets. And they drew totally unwarranted conclusions. It was junk science that helped to propagate the entire urban legend.
Okay. Junk science. Explains everything and the experts are surely wrong.
Meanwhile, other studies show that inclusion of 40% mechanically separated meat does not change the appearance, taste or desirability of chicken nuggets. Do you really think the majority of producers are not going to turn that waste stream into more product and profit?
My 2 year old daughter never liked eggs. We started buying some from a neighbor who pasture raises his lay hens (and feeds them more chicken-appropriate feed).
She eats her eggs and asks for more. If we run out and I fry up some store bought ones, she refuses to eat them - even when I don't tell her where they're from.
Same goes for chicken meat from the grocery store vs. pasture raised broilers from another neighbor.
When it happened the first time it was something of a canary-in-the-coalmine situation for me.
People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.
Anecdotally I have regularly switched between store-bought eggs and eggs from my friend's little farm over the last 20+ years, and try as I might, regardless of consumption method, I have yet to taste a difference. I have also asked many friends over the years if they notice any difference and all have agreed with me.
It doesn't matter though, I still prefer my friend's eggs to store-bought ones, I'd rather not support that dirty industry.
I cannot tell the difference between backyard eggs and fancy store bought (organic, free-range) eggs, but I can tell the difference between that set and industrial store bought eggs.
My expectation is that what you're tasting is the difference between a very fresh egg and an older egg; there's no doubt that's real (older eggs aren't even functionally the same as fresh eggs).
I doubt that there can be any difference in the egg whites, but the egg yolks certainly have a composition in fatty substances that varies with the kind of food used for the chicken, which should lead to noticeable differences.
While there are some taste differences in egg yolks, the taste difference in meat, between chicken that ate mostly what they had found themselves in a large area with abundant vegetation, insects and worms, and chicken that had been raised in industrial complexes, is huge.
Yes, the constitution of the chicken's feed matters enough to change the color of the yolk, so much so that organic chicken farms introduce additives to feed specifically to color the yolks. And yolk color may indeed cause you to enjoy the egg differently! But there is apparently no discernible taste difference, once you control for egg age.
Multiple groups have done tests on this. Kenji did a somewhat informal test, where he dyed the eggs so you couldn't discern the farm egg. The Japanese have done expert panel chicken feed tests. It's interesting stuff!
I think people want this "farm egg" thing to be true more than it really is true. People got mad at me on Twitter when I griped about those Vital Farms eggs (don't buy those eggs! they cost more than 2x as much as commodity organic eggs!).
Anecdata also, but I can compare the eggs at home (homegrown) vs. any normal restaurant around and there definitely is a notable difference in looks and taste.
That said, this applies to scrambled or fried eggs.
Omelettes not so much, as seasoning might play quite a big part, and even less with cakes, baked goods, etc. in which eggs are just one more ingredient.
Honestly, does it matter? If raising the chickens that yield your eggs makes your breakfasts more enjoyable, is physical vs psychological causality relevant? The important thing here is enjoyment of our food.
It does not matter, outside of the context of a message board, where it is of grave importance.
I wonder how much of this is due to there simply being different types of chickens. I would guess that most commercial egg layers are from a specific or small subset of optimized chicken types. While there is a larger variety in the type of chickens people raise in their back yards. My brother has 3 different types of chickens and each lays visually different eggs.