Researchers put Subway chicken under the microscope and the results are more vegetarian than you may think.
The purveyors of slimming sub sandwiches is getting toasted this week by yet another PR mishap. A researcher at Trent University’s Wildlife Forensic DNA Laboratory performed a DNA evaluation of the oven roasted chicken found on Subway’s sandwiches. The results were what you might expect from a multi-national chain that prides itself on cheap food - it’s not 100% chicken. In fact it’s far from it. The study revealed that the oven roasted chicken is only 53.6 percent chicken, and if you thought that was dismal, the chicken strips found on the sandwich giant’s sweet onion teriyaki sub turned out to be only 42.8 percent chicken. So what makes up the other half of the chicken? According to the lab, most of the Subway chicken’s other half is a form of processed soy. Maybe that’s how Jared go so thin?
In comparison, the same laboratory conducted tests on a Wendy’s grilled chicken sandwich and a McDonald’s grilled chicken, and again the results are what you might expect. But they weren’t as bad as the Subway chicken. The lab concluded that the Wendy’s sandwich was 88.5% chicken and the McDonald’s sandwich contained 84.9% chicken.
When asked for a statement, Subway retorted:
The accusations made by CBC Marketplace about the content of our chicken are absolutely false and misleading. Our chicken is 100% white meat with seasonings, marinated and delivered to our stores as a finished, cooked product.”The sub shop continued; “We do not know how they produced such unreliable and factually incorrect data, but we are insisting on a full retraction.” In regard to this statement, we should note that the researchers at the lab were so dumbfounded by their initial results they decided perform the experiment on five different occasions, and the results were in fact accurate - the Subway chicken is half vegetarian. I suppose that means you can tell your vegetarian friends that you’re cutting back on eating meat.