ONTARIO: Your Subway chicken teriyaki sandwich may not really be very chicken, suggests a recent study by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster, which found that the meat in the one of the world’s most popular fast food outlets -Subway- contains only 50 per cent chicken DNA.
CBC’s findings, part of a larger survey which examined chicken items from several fast food chains in Canada, including Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Tim Hortons, it was Subway’s meat content that surprised researchers, so much so that they had to buy additional chicken to test it out.
While the other outlets showed 85 to 90 per cent chicken DNA in its meat, Subway’s oven roasted chicken had just 53.6 per cent, with its chicken strips scored even lower with 42.8 per cent chicken DNA.
Trent University’s Wildlife Forensic DNA Laboratory, which tested the meat for CBC said that chicken purchased from a butcher or supermarket should register 100 per cent chicken DNA, though marinating or seasoning the meat could lower the percentage. The end result; the remaining 60 per cent of the DNA comes from soy, used as a filler instead of meat, according to Fox News.
While Subway did later antagonize the findings, Subway Canada admitted that while the chicken strips are made of “100 per cent white meat chicken”, the end product is not entirely animal flesh, cue the soy.
Well suffice to say, you don’t really need to be eaten with guilt the next time you pop some Subway chickenstrips or are tricked into taking a bite of your friend’s ‘chicken teriyaki’ , you’d be wolfing down an equal amount of Soy.