40 ingredients are used to make Chicken McNuggets. Photo / iStock
40 ingredients are used to make Chicken McNuggets. Photo / iStock
We're often warned about foods with multisyllabic ingredients, and advised against eating things with more than a few components.
In a new book that breaks down the ingredients of 25 popular foods, items also used to make inedible products have been found in the likes of Chicken McNuggets, Campbell's soupand Red Bull.
The collaboration of a food writer and a photographer, Ingredients: A Visual Exploration of 75 Additives & 25 Food Products shows images of deconstructed foods that reveal what they're really made of.
When it came to American Chicken McNuggets, photographer Dwight Eschliman and writer Steve Ettlinger studied what is publicly available nutritional information and found 40 ingredients are used to make the American version of the bite sized snacks.
Included in the list is corn starch, commonly used to thicken food, but also used to make cardboard or as a substitute for gasoline.
And dextrose, a sugar used to make leather more pliable.
Here in New Zealand, the list is much smaller, with McDonald's local website listing chicken, water, flour, thickener, raising agents, salt and spices, wheat starch and vegetable oil as the ingredients used.
Customers can see the full ingredients list for New Zealand Chicken McNuggets on the McDonald's website.
Red Bull's best known ingredient, taurine, has been believed by many to come from bull sperm. In fact, it's synthesised in laboratories and occurs naturally in the bile glands of both humans and animals.
