McNugget Additives: Would You Like Nausea and Delirium With That?

Another day, another report on questionable additives in Chinese food. According to a CNN report, McDonald’s China processes chicken nuggets with two chemicals that are more commonly found in Silly Putty.

The Global Times’ coverage of the report says the chemicals are included in the oil used to cook the nuggets. Succinctly named tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) and dimethylpolysiloxane, the additives are a petroleum-based preservative and an “anti-foaming agent”. I hate it when my chicken McNuggets get all foamy.

The coverage of the story led McDonald’s China to release a statement about the safety of their McNuggs, which said the "quantities of these two chemicals abide by the existing regulation on the use of food additives and they pose no threat to health."

The company, however, refused to disclose the cooking process of Chinese chicken nuggets, which according to CNN is an important part of discerning nutritional information on the product.

So how much Silly-Putty-sauce is actually in these nuggets? We can only hope it’s a negligible amount, as CNN’s food experts report that “a gram could lead to nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.”

However, as the additives are approved for use in China, the Chinese Food and Drug Administration will not be conducting an investigation.