School Lunch: Any Chicken In Those 'Food-Like Nubbins'?

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

More food news now, this from Monica Eng of member station WBEZ in Chicago who hosts a podcast called Chew the Fat. She's been asking the Chicago public schools for weeks to reveal what goes into their chicken nuggets, or as she calls them, food-like nubbins. When the school district said that information wasn't available from their food contractors, the station went to the Illinois attorney general's office and filed a Freedom of Information Act request - all to get a chicken nuggets recipe, not information on government wiretaps.

Yesterday, the Chicago public schools finally responded and supplied a recipe that lists at least 28 ingredients, even without the breading. Chicago public schools' chicken nuggets turn out to be made from textured soy protein concentrate, isolated soy protein - hope I'm not going too fast for you to write all this down - brown sugar, salt, onion powder, maltodextrin, silicon dioxide, citric acid, potassium chloride, sodium phosphates and, oh, yes, a little chicken. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.