Here’s why you NEED TO STOP eating chicken breasts with white stripes on them IMMEDIATELY!

What are those white stripes on chicken breasts?

There is a massive demand for chicken breast in both Europe and North America, due to its lower cost than most pork or beef, ease of preparation, availability of convenience products, lack of religious constraints, and especially for its perceived health benefits. The pressure to produce a larger number of bigger birds has resulted in poultry marketed in half the time and at two times the body weight that it was 50 years ago. With demand primarily for breast meat, birds have been bred to have pectoral muscles that are now 20{cbfb65fa2e9bc153d14eb3275fabde027e4687af6d67a0ae845f0dafc1d76f73} of their body weight. 

A study from The Italian Journal of Animal Science reports an increasing issue of what’s called ‘white striping’ in conventionally-grown chicken breasts. This is a defect in which white striations appear parallel to the muscle fibers, and result in a drastic change in the nutritional quality of the meat. The breast is now higher in fat by up to 224{cbfb65fa2e9bc153d14eb3275fabde027e4687af6d67a0ae845f0dafc1d76f73}, but much lower in protein. What’s worse, is that this difference in nutritional properties may or may not appear on the label. 

The exact cause of this poultry epidemic is not known, it is likely a result of the intense genetic selection towards increased growth rate and breast size of conventional chickens, coupled with the conditions in which they are raised and the diets that they are fed.

The Problems with Conventional Poultry.

Living Conditions

Conventionally raised birds are kept in cages their entire lives, packed so tightly with thousands of other chickens that they can’t even open their wings. The are made to grow fast and disproportionately so that they are unable to support their body weight and end up lying in their own feces. 

Hormones

Not only are they often fed soy based products which increase estrogen levels  but the stress that each bird experiences due to their living conditions and fear experienced during slaughter increases the amounts of stress levels in their bodies. These steroid hormones – such as adrenaline and cortisol –  end up in our meat.

Antibiotics

The use of antibiotics to attempt to lower rates of bacteria and illness in poultry ends up creating antibiotic resistant bacteria, which also ends up in our food. In their Antibiotic-Resistance Threat Report, the CDC found that 2 million Americans are infected by these bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 die as a result. 

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