Mark Bittman is an amazing food writer, but he tends to go a little overboard in his editorial pieces. So it is with his latest missive, which is designed to convince you to give up chicken altogether. In this case, it's not for the reason you expect. Although Bittman strongly advocates eating less meat, and is a passionate inventer and supporter of the "Vegetarian Mondays" and "Vegetarian Before 6" programs, in this case it's because of salmonella.
People (including myself) eat a lot of chicken because chicken is cheap. Just this morning I came home from the store with an Extreme Value Pack of boneless skinless chicken breasts that was on sale for 99 cents a pound. It's the cheapest meat in the store, and in a time when food costs are steadily rising, this is not something you can easily dismiss.
But the cheaper chicken is, the more sloppily it is prepared. Cheap meat doesn't manifest itself from the ether. It means that corners are being cut, industrial lines are being run faster, and employees are being paid and trained less (and therefore care less about doing their jobs well). The industrial chicken meat machine that brings us those cutlets on a styrofoam tray is responsible for some pretty severe salmonella outbreaks, and neither they nor the government is doing anything about it.
This is a pretty good point, and something to think about. But Bittman has to double down and tell the tale of a man who ended up in the hospital with long-term brain injury, "all for going to a neighbor's barbecue." Frankly the only thing I take away from this anecdote is that a lot of other people's food handling skills are sub-par at best.
America has one of the worst food safety records in the developed world, and it only seems to be getting worse. Avoiding chicken isn't the solution, because food-borne illness happens in other meats (not to mention fresh fruits and vegetables) all the time.
Image courtesy Flickr/elfpics
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