Chicken Labeling At The Supermarket

From Air-Chilled to All-Natural: Understanding Chicken Labels at the Supermarket

Borrowed from:America's Test KitchenJanuary 15, 2015

Supermarkets used to only sell one or two types of chicken, but these days, the options available when buying whole chicken or chicken parts are overwhelming. Chickens are labeled with little explanation or clarity for the home cook. What exactly do terms like “natural,” “organic,” and “air-chilled” really mean? 

Many claims cited on chicken packaging have no government regulation, while those that do are often poorly enforced. Here’s how to evaluate which claims are meaningful—and which are full of loopholes or empty hype.

USDA Organic

The seal “USDA Organic” is considered the gold standard for organic labeling. This label ensures that chicken eat organic feed that doesn't contain animal byproducts, are raised without antibiotics, and have access to the outdoors (how much access, however, isn't regulated).

Air-Chilled

“Air-chilled” means that chickens were not water-chilled en masse in a chlorinated bath and the meat did not absorb any water during processing. (Water-chilled birds can retain up to 14 percent water—which must be printed on the label—diluting flavor and inflating cost.) Instead, individual chickens hang from a conveyor belt and circulate around a cold room.

Raised Without Antibiotics

“Raised without antibiotics” and other claims regarding antibiotic use are important; too bad they’re not strictly enforced. (The only rigorous enforcement is when the claim is subject to the USDA Organic seal.) Loopholes seem rife, like injecting the eggs—not the chickens—with antibiotics or feeding them feather meal laced with residual antibiotics from treated birds.

Natural and All Natural

Beware the ubiquitous “natural” and “all natural” food labels. In actuality, the USDA has defined the term just for fresh meat, stipulating only that no synthetic substances have been added to the cut. Producers may thus raise their chickens under the most unnatural circumstances on the most unnatural diets, inject birds with broth during processing, and still put the claim on their packaging.

Vegetarian-Fed and Vegetarian Diet

“Vegetarian-fed” and “vegetarian diet” sound healthy, but are they? Since such terms aren’t regulated by the government, you’re relying on the producer’s notion of the claim, which may mean feeding chickens cheap “vegetarian” bakery leftovers. The winners of our whole chicken tasting assured us that their definitions mean a diet consisting of corn and soy.

Hormone-Free

When used with chicken (and pork) “hormone-free” is an empty reassurance, since the USDA does not allow the use of hormones or steroids in the production of either chicken or pork.

Want more tips like these? In the Chicken Purchasing and Prep course from the  America’s Test Kitchen Online Cooking School, you’ll learn about chicken labeling, as what to look for when buying whole chickens or chicken parts. You’ll review how best to prepare chicken for cooking, and we've included a comprehensive guide to food safety and cleanup as well.

The Vita'myth'

Ideally, we should be getting all of the vitamins and nutrients from the foods we eat, however, with the way we have been conditioned to prepare our food, most of us have needed to supplement those missing nutrients for years. Every time we heat up our food, it loses some of its beneficial properties. When we microwave that food, it essentially destroys whatever health benefits the food formally had. If that wasn't bad enough, the industrial processing of these foods prior to hitting the shelf of our grocery store has already started the destruction, and we only make it worse with our end-user preparation.

Whether you pop a multivitamin daily or you religiously swallow a whole cluster of vitamins that range from A to zinc, there’s no denying that there’s a lot of misinformation surrounding these little pills. If you do a web search for information on vitamins, you will find a wide range of information running the full spectrum from "you must add these to your diet" to "avoid at all costs". When you ask your doctor about the benefits of vitamin and mineral supplements, most of them will skirt away from the conversation at all costs, almost to the level of suspicious denial. In my most humble opinion, most of the "studies" that you read that tell you to stay away from vitamins need to be tempered with a heavy level of skepticism. Remember, these studies are often completed by the very same medical community and pharmaceutical industry that has a lot to lose when the general public begins to learn the truth, makes better food choices, and ultimately becomes significantly healthier.

What brand should I choose?
The vast selection of vitamins and mineral supplements you see at your local grocery store is simply mind boggling. You could easily stare at the display for an hour and ultimately walk away frustrated after giving up. As if the varied vitamin choices weren't intimidating enough, there are often 3 or 4 brands of these vitamins staring you in the face as well. How do you choose? My suggestion... WALK AWAY!! Because the entire supplement industry is largely self-regulated, the claims found on the bottles is nothing more than flash, designed to draw you in, and have you spend your money. The real issue here is the fact that it is impossible to know the purity of these supplements. In a perfect world, these companies would not only have to disclose how much of their formula is filler product, but would also supply information about the farming, harvesting, and processing habits of these items. There are many companies out there who are as much about education as they are about business, and work to empower the public to make the best decisions for themselves. Our personal favorite for this is Garden Of Life. The biggest thing that drew us to them in the first place, after doing exhausting research, is the fact that their multivitamin is a whole food / raw food vitamin, providing you with not only the purest of ingredients, but with the highest level of vitamins and nutrients possible shy of eating the raw foods yourself.

So many vitamins to choose from-
As to the specifics of what vitamins you should be consuming, that depends entirely on your dietary habits and your health. Each of these are designed to enhance or supplement specific dietary needs. The best advice may be to seek out the assistance of a dietitian or nutritionist. Try what works for you, and know that taking these supplements should only be a short-term stop gap on your journey to better health and better food choices, so you you won't need to rely on a pill to get the nutrition that our bodies crave to do the job they were intended to do. This is a marathon, take the first step, and Take Back Control Of Your Life!


Cheers,
-=\E/=-

Supermarket Fuel Points

Maximizing Your Supermarket Fuel Points

Save $1.00/gallon (or more) on EVERY fill-up

Supermarket fuel points are a great little perk being offered by many chains across the country as a nominal "bribe" to get you to visit them more often and spend your grocery money there. These perks (like most reward programs) are really more fluff than substance, and most often created to benefit the sponsor of the reward program more than the end user...

UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW TO WORK THE SYSTEM

How Does It Work?:
First, let's get a general understanding about these programs- The details I present here are specific to Kroger, since that is the program I am most familiar with (this is a generalized overview, since every fuel point program is individual, and may include extra details, restrictions, etc. that are not covered in this article).

• Earn 1 point for every $1 you spend in the grocery store
• Redeem 100 points for $.10/gallon savings
• Maximum $1.00/gallon savings per fill-up
• Maximum 35 gallons per fill-up
• Points expire at the end of the month after they are earned (Jan points expire end of Feb)

Based upon the details above, we see that, in order to maximize your fuel savings, you would need to spend $1,000 in order to save $1.00 per gallon (1.0%). With the maximum redemption of 35 gallons, that equates to a maximum savings of $35 for $1,000 in purchases (3.5%). These days, most vehicles have gas tanks of less than 20 gallons, and most of those people don't wait until they are limping in with an empty gas tank to fill up, effectively destroying any real benefit the program makes you think you have earned.

When you look at what you are actually saving compared to how much you have purchased, the numbers make you wonder why you were excited about the program in the first place. 

To break down the actual savings by percent:

1,000 in purchases, equates to $1.00/gallon savings (1% overall rebate)

35 Gallons (max)- 3.5%

30 Gallons- 3.0%

25 Gallons- 2.5%

20 Gallons- 2.0%

15 Gallons- 1.5%

10 Gallons- 1.0% (average fuel fill-up amount)

It's all about the marketing:

Grocery chains love to advertise this program and the $1.00/gallon savings because people will perk up and listen, especially in times when gas prices are creeping back up. The perception of the savings is far away above the actual savings you receive. As evidenced in the examples above, the actual savings is pitifully low as compared to your investment. Of course, those of us who share our discounted fuel price on social media are also adding 'fuel to the fire', which is essentially more free advertising for the chain. Like so many other rewards programs, if the host of the program would advertise the actual "real-life" savings you could expect to receive, most people would never bother signing up in the first place.

Making the program work for you:

The real secret to savings here is in the gift cards. In fact, if you do it right, you can maximize your normal monthly spending habits by adding fuel discounts to the mix. Where we shop, gift cards are almost always credited as double fuel points. In other words, $100 in gift cards would be the same as spending $200 on groceries, effectively and instantly doubling the savings you receive. A few times per year, the gift card bonus skyrockets to 4x, bringing you the best bang for your buck. That 4x fuel times bonus becomes the perfect time to purchase extra gift cards for upcoming gift giving or stockpiling a supply for later.

Here is where the fun begins:

Take a look at your monthly spending commitments and see which of those can be replaced by gift cards. Do you pay Netflix every month? How about Hulu? Do you go to Starbucks every morning?  Do you shop at Target? Amazon? JC Penney? Do you eat out at chain restaurants like Fridays? Applebees? Instead of using a credit or debit card for these purchases, buy gift cards and use those instead. For example, when you buy an Amazon gift card, add it to your Amazon account, so your purchases are covered by the gift card(s). If there are gift cards available, do the same for all of the other auto-pay subscription plans that would ordinarily take money directly out of your bank account. 

For retail purchases, once you know that you are going to make a purchase, go get a gift card for that store first. With a little bit of pre-planning, you quickly become a master of this program, and reap the savings without feeling trapped by having to spend a fortune in the grocery store.

Are you planning a trip? Use gift cards to budget a monthly spending allowance and have the trip (at least) partially paid well in advance.

The hidden security benefit:

With all of the credit card breaches and online hacks that have been occurring over the past few years, more and more people are finding themselves victims of identity theft or, at the very least, afraid that their credit or debit card information has been compromised. When you use gift cards to make your purchases and pay for your online commitments, you have an added level of security because your credit card information is no longer at risk. When you eat at a restaurant, and present your credit card at the end of your meal, you are at risk of an unscrupulous server stealing your card information. That risk becomes severely limited if you pay for the meal with a gift card.

Is all of this really worthwhile?:

The answer to that depends entirely upon you and your personal spending habits. It took us a little while to make the most of this, and, even after 2 years of following this method, we are still finding new gift cards we can buy and use on a monthly basis to help us save money in the long run. It only takes $500/month of gift card purchases to reach 1000 fuel points ($1.00 savings per gallon).

Using the gift cards also makes it very easy to stick to a monthly budget-  When you are budgeting your monthly discretionary spending, how much do you have left to spend? If you want to make a $20 purchase and only have $8 left on a gift card, it may make it easier to hold off on that purchase until next month's gift card purchase.