Annie Walton Doyle
People have been left feeling nauseated after finding out what ‘spaghetti chicken’ is…
An image of an extremely bizarre-looking chicken breast has gone viral this week.
Food lovers around the world were left confused as to why the chicken breast had that strange and stringy appearance.
But now, it’s been revealed to be ‘spaghetti chicken’ – and the explanation for how it occurs is grossing everyone out…
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The story all started when Texas-based mum Alesia Cooper bought some chicken breasts from a well-known supermarket chain to cook for her kids.
She claimed she was washing her chicken before cooking it when it became stringy and started to fall apart in her hands.
Cooper posted photos of her experience on Facebook, claiming that she hadn’t ‘made chicken off the bone since’.
She also questioned whether the chicken was ‘fake meat’.
“I have been debating on posting this but since I had to see it so do y’all,” Cooper wrote.
“I was cooking my kids’ dinner a couple of weeks ago and was cleaning my meat like I normally do and when I went back to start cooking it turned into this… I ain’t made chicken off the bone since.”
However, the post quickly made its way over to X, formerly known as Twitter.
People quickly revealed the strange-looking chicken is ‘spaghetti’ meat – and they’ve shared the reason why it occurs.
One user says: “I look for this every time I clean and cook chicken. I haven’t experienced it yet, but if I ever do, it’s going straight in the trash.”
Another adds: “Oh hell naw. I was planning on cooking chicken breast for dinner tomorrow. Now idk.”
A third advises: “That’s why you go to a fresh meat market/store instead of these big corp stores.”
While a fourth writes: “We should be more mindful of where our food comes from and how it’s produced.”
The reason for the strange texture of the meat is due to breeding to make big-breasted chickens grow faster.
The Poultry Site explains that: “The chicken that is bought out of the grocery store comes from birds called broilers. Broilers are strains of birds used in the poultry industry, and their only purpose is to produce a large amount of meat in a short amount of time.
“If the industry is able to grow a big bird in a short amount of time, it will cost less to produce, which in turn creates an inexpensive and delicious product for the consumer.”
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Chickens grown for meat are now growing around twice as fast as 50 years ago, according to the National Chicken Council.
They explain that the average chicken goes to market on day 47 today at a weight of 6.56 lbs (2.98 kg), whereas in 2000, it still went to the market on day 47, but at a weight of 5.03 lbs (2.28 kg).
But when meat grows that fast, it can have a weird, stringy texture.
‘Spaghetti meat’ is what researchers have termed chicken breast fillets which can be pulled apart by hand into what looks like stringy spaghetti noodles, per The Wall Street Journal.
“There is proof that these abnormalities are associated with fast-growing birds,” Dr Massimiliano Petracci, a professor of agriculture and food science at the University of Bologna in Italy, explains.
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