Patriot Health Digest
If you are worried about nutrition, and the quality of the food you get, you might want to read this. A group has looked into the samples of white chicken at 16 supermarkets for evidence of a disease that might impact the nutritional quality of chicken you buy at the store.
Today, the investigators show the three top grocery chains that they report have sold chickens with the greatest amount of the disease. Here is what you should know about these findings.
The Humane League, a group pushing for animal welfare, has done an investigation on white striping disease inside chicken. They state white striping disease is what is called a muscle myopathy that happens when chickens are farmed for rapid growth.
According to this report, the condition affected under 5% of chickens 10 years ago. Today, however, it is far more common. The group highlighted data from the Sentience Institute that points toward the white striping disease being 99% of all farm animals that are raised on factory farms.
The Humane League suggests that the white striping disease leads to 224% higher fat and 9% lower quality protein in the chicken products that consumers are buying.
In the spring, the organization did an investigation on chicken breasts in 16 major U.S. grocery stores. Those were Kroger, Walmart, Ahold Delhaize, Costco, Albertsons, H-E-B, Publix, Target, Aldi, Meijer, Wakefern, Trader Joe’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club, HyVee, Wegmans, and Giant Eagle.
They looked at 76 and 154 samples of every store’s store brand of chicken breast. These samples were collected from over 29 states, going from Washington to Maine, California and Florida.
Then the group rated the amounts of white striping in the grocery chicken. A score of zero showed chicken with the lowest amount of the disease, while a three revealed the highest.
They reported that Walmart, Meijer, and BJs had chickens with the highest amounts of white striping. And Trader Joe’s was among the stores that had the chicken with the lowest levels of white striping.
While the disease affects chicken, it does not have much reported impact on the health of humans. The bottom line for you, if you choose to only eat humanely bred and free range chickens, you will be helping put an end to unhealthy and inhumane chicken breeding in America’s food supply. You will also reduce your chances of getting any possible future disease that is also introduced into America’s food supply because of mass farming conditions.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
