I felt I had to write a response to the numerous emails I received after writing a science-based column on Chicken McNuggets. There were some 200 emails, attributable to the column making it onto Yahoo.ca. Some accused me of being paid by McDonalds, some suggested that I must have been paid by the health food industry to attack the company. Here is my response:
I’m shocked. And that doesn’t happen easily. My columns do tend to generate comments, but last week’s piece about Chicken McNuggets has unleashed an unprecedented deluge. The vast majority of comments (95%) were highly favourable, expressing gratitude for a “well written poignant article,” one “that wasn’t filled with fear mongering and extravagant exaggerations” and provided “an objective analysis of the subject.”
But there were a few that were vitriolic in their disagreement. One questioned the marital status of my parents, another ranked my IQ in the lowest possible category on a now discarded mental retardation scale. My mental insufficiency was also associated with a common form of sexual activity. But that was mild relative to the enlightened soul who paradoxically ended his outburst of anti-semitic remarks by calling me a Nazi, as well as a fascist with a proclivity for unusual carnal practices. This beacon of intelligence also informed me that the chemicals in Chicken McNuggets are placed there “either out of greed from Ray Kroc or to kill middle class populations.” Nice guy.
One progressively minded correspondent thinks I should be facing charges of child endangerment for recklessly leading kids down the wrong nutritional path, and another claims that either I’m delusional, or that I’m compelled to write a misleading article because somehow I stand to profit by being in cahoots with some industrial food provider. The absurd allegation that I must have been paid by McDonalds to write this “ill-informed” piece was popular, as were comparisons between the size of my brain and that of various insects and rodents, decidedly not to my advantage. Then there was the gentleman who showed off his colourful, if somewhat limited, mastery of the English language in speculating about what my body was actually filled with. I was also given advice about improving my skimpy knowledge of chemistry by a number of people who had amassed their scientific wisdom by sporadically attending the University of Google.
I was amazed by many of the comments, but perhaps the most striking feature was the different conclusions that people arrived at by reading the same piece. It seems that once minds are made up, they will not be altered. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good argument, as the saying goes. Some people thanked me for exposing the horrors of Chicken McNuggets , while others condemned me for inflating its dangers. Of course, I did neither. I pointed out that McNuggets were not high on the list of nutritious foods, but the fact that they contained an antioxidant additive and an anti-foaming agent were not a reason to shun them.
My dismissal of the relevance of the antioxidant added to the frying oil being derived from petroleum irritated one reader who asked if I would like to drizzle motor oil on my pasta. No, I wouldn’t. But I would have no problem taking a statin drug or an ulcer medication made from petroleum. Petroleum is a complex mixture of hundreds of compounds which can be separated into various classes through refining by virtue of boiling point differences. Then through "catalytic cracking," the different fractions can be broken down into simple compounds that serve as raw materials for the synthesis of a large variety of organic compounds that include drugs, vitamins and food additives such as TBHQ. These have nothing in common with petroleum, the only link to petroleum is their ancestry, which has nothing to do with the risk-benefit ratio. That can only be determined by proper study.
There were also a number of reasonable comments. One correspondent pointed out disturbing facets of factory farming, but as I understand it, McDonalds will not buy chickens from farmers who use the controversial practice of withholding food and water to increase egg production. Another called attention to my complaint about the high fat content of McNuggets to make the point that not all fats are bad. The “fat makes you fat” fallacy is a major catalyst in the obesity epidemic, he opined. There is something to that, but the fact is that in McNuggets 57% of the calories come from fat and that is too much no matter how you look at it.
Many took issue with my challenging Dr. Marion Nestle’s advice to stay away from foods that list unpronounceable ingredients on the label. I stated that the potential toxicity of a substance has nothing to do with the complexity of its chemical name, which is of course correct. While not contesting the validity of this statement, some readers argued that the “unpronounceable” names are a hallmark of processed foods that are generally of poor nutritional quality, and that therefore their presence on a label serves as an effective “shopping guide” for foods to avoid. I have the same problem with that as I have with telling children to behave, because if they don’t, the bogeyman will get them. It may be effective, but it is not the right way to go about affecting behavior. Education is.
Food additives are subjected to stringent safety requirements, including possible long term consequences. They are not callously added to foods by producers bent on maximizing profits at the risk of forsaking public health. While scaring consumers away from foods that are laden with additives may drive them towards consuming more fruits and vegetables, which of course is highly desirable, it also feeds the current frenzy of chemophobia. That, as I learned from some of the uncivilized responses to my column, has some very troublesome consequences.
I would suggest that the lurid, vicious emails speckled with obscenities and reeking of ignorance that I received are a testimonial not only to the extent of scientific illiteracy out there, but also to the shocking, out-of-perspective hate-mongering it precipitates. Clearly we have a societal problem when a piece about a few pieces of chicken unleashes a torrent of vile personal attacks. A few, to their credit, apologized after I responded to their comments at length. This experience has certainly strengthened my resolve to push for more scientific education at all levels and to put up with disparaging remarks such as the ones this column will now incite.