A nutritionist’s advice on packaged supermarket chicken: “It’s important to read the label”

2023-05-21 17:29:42

It is increasingly common to find in supermarkets the packaged chicken fillets, a format that is very practical for consumers in a hurry. However, attention should be paid to the information coming on the labels of this product, since what is sold is not always 100% chicken, as the nutritionist Pablo Ojeda has warned.

Despite the fact that food safety in Spain is “one of the best in Europe”, one of the most common deceptions in which consumers can fall in supermarkets has chicken as the protagonist. “There are many times, when they sell chicken, that much of the chicken is watereven if it is sold filleted,” says Ojeda in the program Better late of the Sixth.

“When you put it in a frying pan, logically, it reduces, shrinks a bit… There they can give you a pig in a poke. That’s why it is important to read the labels“He has warned, since they specify whether the product includes any other ingredient, in addition to chicken.

In the event that there are labels on which, when searching for the ingredients, they do not appear, Ojeda has explained why: “When there is only one single ingredient —chicken, in this case—, by law, it is not mandatory to put ingredients”.

When it is bought at the cut, “as a general rule it is chicken,” he says. But if the chicken comes packaged, “look at the label,” the nutritionist has advised.

This type of food fraud occurs not only with chicken, but also in restaurants, with Red tuna’ which is not, or ox that is actually an old cowhas indicated this expert.

“With bluefin tuna, what they usually do is add food coloringwhich is innocuous”, he commented. The best way to know if it really is bluefin tuna or not is the price, which is usually around 30 or 40 euros per kilo, “while normal tuna costs 9 or 10 euros the kilo”, points out Ojeda.

“He price is already a sure indicator that they can be giving us a pig in a poke no matter how much it puts ‘red'”, he insisted.

“The same is true of the beef chop, whose price per kilo is around 150 euros. If you find a steak below that price, it’s an old cow. The grain, the fat distribution… are different,” she explained.