I have always bought plain rotisserie chicken from Sprouts grocery stores. Recently, I noticed something alarming. The plain chicken now contains cane sugar and natural flavors.
I asked the Sprouts meat counter employee and they said that they do not add anything to the plain chickens. BUT she said they just switched chicken suppliers — to Perdue.
Why would Perdue add these ingredients to a “plain” chicken?
Does anyone know if this is the case?
It is in the marinade. All chicken store bought is infused with salt and sugar. Up to 25% of the weight of the chicken is a brine solution.Plus all the other chemicals and “natural flavorings”Find a local farmer or a farmers market and get tour chicken there. Learn how to cook, connect with your food and live long and prosper.
Purdue injects them first. I am not sure how this particular store prepares their rotisserie but every place I have ever seen (look at my name and guess what I do for a living) then also at the very keast marinades again or brines or injects with more seasonings. Sugar and salt are your main ingredients in any brine.Want to freak out? Look at the chemicals in walmarts rotisserie chickens! They taste great but are loaded with preservatives and other chems. Disgusting what we allow companies to put in our food.Also, google Tyson chicken pollution. Horrible
Hi I used to work at sprouts in the deli! Like less than a year ago. We do not add anything to the plain rotisserie chickens. We take them out of the nasty 50lb boxes and put them straight into the oven. So the ingredients listed are from Perdue, not sprouts.
Edit: I still work at sprouts part time, just not in the deli. We used the get chicken from Tyson, and now stores are slowly switching to Perdue nationwide. And since Sprouts is a corporate company, we all have to prepare foods generally the same as other Sprouts stores.
Read “The Dorito Effect” - that book goes into detail on why chickens are the way they are now in our supply chain, including the lack of flavor and the extra injections they do to them
Edit: spelling
The switch of supplier might also be because of the size of the chickens they need. Those rotisserie birds need to be of equal size to all cook in the same time. You don’t want to have some dry and others undercooked. I work in the chicken industry and know that Tyson prefers to produce large birds, much bigger than rotisserie size. And Perdue does a better job of getting them the right size.
As for the brine, most of them do it. For flavor and texture but also to beef up the weight. Unless you go with specialty brands, like Springer Mountain, or air chilled chicken, it will be brined.
Dr. Oz did a deep dive on costco rotisserie chicken and the labels nor nutrition label includes sugar and dextrose but indeed it is in there. It lists “natural seasonings” and I really habe no idea how they can list it as kept and zero carbs. Total bs how labels get manipulated by giant companies and nothing happens.
In addition to what people have said regarding the brine percentages etc. Another contributor is that chicken probably performed better in their test group survey studies than the other more bland chicken. Decisions like this are almost always based on test group surveys so the answer is usually “it’s more likely to sell.” This is one of the reasons sodas went from being 24g of sugar per can to 52g, for example. More sweet = higher sales. Sugar is addictive and they know it.
No one in their right mind should be eating these rotisserie chickens anyway. Filled with salt and now sugar and flavoring? It takes an hour and a half to cook a small chicken rubbed with butter and seasonings. Lasts 3 days. I knew someone who made their chicken soup with rotisserie chickens. Disgusting!