Tumbled chicken in supermarkets

Edwardia

Chicken with added water from Brazil is being tumbled with more water in the Netherlands illegally, before being sold frozen in Aldi, ASDA, Iceland and Sainsbury's and the finished product has up to 18% water.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/06/supermarket-frozen-chicken-breasts-water

My comment on this is that food writer Joanna Blythman wrote about the process in a book of hers in the 90s which I found in a charity shop. I assumed this had been stopped years ago.

It's not just chicken by the way.. finding glucose, sodium acetate and 11% water in fresh pork loin steaks at Tesco, is what decided me to go organic in March 2012.

tattycath

Gosh! That make interesting uncomfortable reading.
It isn't often, but we sometimes purchase frozen chicken fillets. Well, we did, but we won't be buying any more. Thanks for this info.

richardw

It's the "discount" ranges though, as described in the Guardian report.
It's cheap for a reason, so nothing new there then.
Always have a good read of the label.

Kirri

Shame so many people only want 'cheap'. They get what they pay for..

I'd like to see clear labelling on all foods showing where it is from and where it has been 'manufactured'.. then maybe people could make better decisions.

Interesting bit on the Adam & Nigel Slater farm prog on Wed evening - they went to a supposedly higher welfare chicken farm - was good to see that Nigel Slater was a bit shocked by it all and said maybe people need to be eating less meat like they used to rather than going for that type of cheap produced chicken. That prog was more on the lack of space though rather than any added bits/water.

GwylimT

Things like that are why I never buy fish or meat from supermarkets, corner shops etc.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

I stopped buying frozen meat years, and years ago... you can tell when a piece of chicken has been pumped with water, it looks and feels totally different....


another reason to use your local butchers/producers...

HPoirot

Disgusting, and we always get corn-fed chicken from the butcher's.

On some nights when we have had to get chicken breasts urgently from the turkish shop round the corner (because we hadn't planned meals obviously), it has always been a disappointment - the smell, texture, and the foaming liquid that comes out when you are trying to cook it into a stir-fry for example, made me wish we hadn't bothered. Quite off-putting.

parsonswife8

I felt sick at the thought of it and even more so when I chanced about the picture.

pakokelso93

feel sick at what? eating water?!

It's cheap, it has water in it. Boom value range. Some can only afford that. I would eat corn feed if I could afford it, so some people/posters don't patronise with the "oh just go to the butcher."

Edwardia

I buy my chicken from Ocado because the lone independent butcher in my town doesn't do organic and we don't have a Farmers' Market here either.

Organic isn't cheap, but OH and I don't smoke, don't drink (except Christmas Day), don't have kids and no longer have any pets.

However, tumbled chicken isn't confined to value ranges and nor is the added water confined to chicken.

When we bought Tesco pork loin steaks they weren't from the Value range, nor were they raw meat with fancy coatings for the BBQ. Just plain, standard stuff but with 11% added water that wasn't mentioned on the label on the front.

Personally, I don't think cheap food should mean sub-standard food. Lidl does some great free range chicken for example.

I am quite surprised to see Aldi mentioned specifically. In N America, Aldi does organic food and owns health food supermarket Trader Joe's.

Any Aldi customers on here who have ever noticed any labelling mentioning added water ?

Somehow, when you buy something that isn't Value and isn't cheap, it feels even worse to find that it contains added water and additives. Like a betrayal of my trust by the supermarket, if that makes sense ?

stephen77

Water can be added for a few reason.
one of them is increasing the weight but it has other functions such as to get salt into the muscle fibres to help with tenderness. also to help marinate flavours into the meat as well.
if I marinate beef in water its seen as cheapening, if I use wine its seen as adding value.