KFC IS SELLING A CORSAGE WITH FRIED CHICKEN IN IT. YES, I KNOW I HAVE THE CAPS LOCK ON!

I just threw up a little at the news that KFC has released a drumstick corsage just in time for prom season.

Yeah, you read right: It’s a corsage with a hunk of dead, fried chicken in the middle of soft, fragrant flowers.

I’m assuming it’s a marketing ploy to get exactly this type of attention. Healthy food-loving writers like me will tell you how utterly offensive this is. So, of course, rebellious teens will find some kind of demented pleasure in strapping a dead animal to their wrists.

Maybe it’s an effort by a KFC marketing guy who was presumably stood up on his prom? And maybe now he’s trying to humiliate girls by getting grease stains all over their satiny prom dresses?

Or, maybe this is KFC’s commentary on schools nixing fast food? We may have won the battle for healthier school in the lunchroom, but they can sell kids chicken as accessories.

Whatever the reason, it exists. For $20, your date could be wearing a hunk of original recipe chicken. There’s even a slightly disturbing Wes Anderson-y inspired video promoting the corsage. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I watched the whole thing. Mostly though, I was just waiting for the “we’re just kidding! Ha ha fooled you” part. But it never came.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Taco Bell Sells Fake Meat. So What? Everybody’s Doing It

Kentucky Fried Marketing

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Food companies are like greedy cocaine dealers – cutting food with cheaper ingredients to increase profits. This is nothing new, and it’s not just happening with meat.

But first, about that beef with Taco Bell’s “beef.” Vegetable proteins are cheaper than meat and that’s why they are used as extenders by companies like Taco Bell. Texturized Soy Protein is one of the most commonly used extenders. Why is it so cheap?

Texturized soy protein is actually a by-product of soy oil, so the food industry gets to double dip while taking advantage of the massive government subsidies bestowed upon the soy industry.

Let’s take a look at the other duplicitous tactics the food companies employ in their ingredients.

Taco Bell:

According to its own nutrition statements, Taco Bell’s Cherry Limeade contains: Treated water, Sugar, Lime Juice Concentrate, Natural Flavor, Sodium Citrate, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Disodium EDTA, Red 40. What, no cherries? Thank goodness the water is “treated.”

In case you thought it was just the taco meat, Taco Bell’s carnitas contain pork, water, spice, roast pork flavor, natural smoke flavor, pork conditioner (modified food starch, tapioca), corn syrup solids, and a slew of other “flavors” and “textures.”

Do we want to know what “pork conditioner” looks like?

Burger King:

The Taco Filling at Burger King contains water as the first ingredient, followed by beef, and then textured vegetable protein (itself a mixture of soy flour, artificial colors, flavors, and chemicals, and starches). Burger King isn’t required to list the percentages, so it’s anyone’s guess how much meat there is in relation to this textured vegetable protein.

KFC:

I think KFC might be the worst offender. KFC’s Chicken Pot Pie lists chicken stock, potatoes (and their accompanying preservatives), carrots, peas, modified food starch, chicken fat, chicken pot pie “flavor” (consisting of hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat gluten protein, salt, vegetable stock [carrot, onion, celery], maltodextrin, flavors, dextrose, chicken broth), as well as hydrogenated oils, chemicals, and preservatives…all before we ever hear a mention of chicken. Download the ingredient listings here.

The Apple Turnover contains enriched bleached flour water, vegetable shortening, starches, gums, conditioners, flavors, and preservatives before mentioning apples (themselves accompanied by salt, ascorbic acid, citric acid, high fructose corn syrup, water, food starch-modified, and spices).

Wendy’s:

Wendy’s, by contrast, sells food that more closely resembles food, albeit with tons of preservatives. For example, the Crispy Chicken Patty contains chicken breast, water, salt, sodium phosphates, flours, starches, spices, and a whole lot of hydrogenated oils.

Think you’re safe from all this processed material if you don’t eat in fast food restaurants? Think again.

Kellogg’s, Betty Crocker and General Mills:

Packaged food companies have been passing off sugar, corn syrup, starch, hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors and artificial food dye as blueberries. After all, blueberries are pretty expensive.

Lean Cuisine:

A stroll through the frozen foods aisle in the grocery store revels that Lean Cuisine Baked Chicken contains Isolated Soy Protein. This appears to be a piece of actual flesh, but clearly it has been broken down and processed. Likewise, the chunks of beef in the Lean Cuisine Hunan Beef contain modified cornstarch product, caramel coloring added.

Marie Callender’s:

The turkey in Marie Callender’s Turkey Breast Dinner lists Isolated Soy Protein as a main ingredient.

Hungry Man by Swanson’s:

This icon of the frozen food aisle lists water, food starch, and soy protein concentrate as ingredients in the turkey in its Turkey Breast Dinner.

What’s the solution? Eat real food as much as possible. Fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, meats from the meat counter, and cook for yourself. That’s the only way to ensure you’re getting exactly what you think you’re getting. And you’ll probably live a lot longer too.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Images: Andres Rueda, theimpulsivebuy, Sjors Provoost, .angels, D.L., House of Sims, theimpulsivebuy, theimpulsivebuy, inazakira

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Well, not so much.

PETA Steals First Lady When She’s Not Looking (January 2010)

Want to be endorsed by a celebrity? Now you can, with the all-new PETA marketing technique “Shameless Theft (TM)”. If your work is in a good cause and you like the idea of, say, First Lady Michelle Obama giving it the thumbs-up, simply steal her image and slap it wherever you please. When a fuss arises, clarify that you’re “honoring” your target by featuring their image (while furthering your own aims without prior permission). Oh, and when you finally back down in a show of “good faith,” be sure to point the finger at someone else. It’s the adult thing to do.

Incidentally, this entire post is personally endorsed by those huge blue aliens in James Cameron’s Avatar. No, really.

KFC vs. PETA: Flaming Silly to Monumentally Daft (January 2010)

As we’ve noted before, there’s nothing that PETA enjoys more than the smell of roasting Kentucky Fried Chicken – the company, that is. Their latest attempts to haul this fast food corporation over the coals? Firstly, PETA wants Indianapolis fire trucks to sign an advertising deal, the same way the fire department has with the finger-lickin’ folk – and secondly, a 5.5 foot tall statue of a gory chicken on crutches, artfully monikered “KFC Cripples Chickens”.

In both cases, local officials denied the requests, citing inappropriate context and legislation and, in the former case, the fact that “advertising on a fire truck could even lead motorists to believe a truck heading for an emergency was just performing a stunt.” Quite.

Lydia Guevara Picks Up Carrot And Keeps On Shooting (June 2009)

Did you know Che Guevara’s granddaughter is vegetarian? Before mid-2009, neither did PETA, but once they twigged they wasted no time in divesting her of most of her clothes, daubing her with camouflage paint and hanging a bandolier of carrots round her neck. “Join the vegetarian revolution” ran the accompanying tagline. Self-proclaimed nonviolent PETA associating itself with bloody Cuban guerrilla warfare? In the fight for animal rights, it seems the first casualty is your own core principles.

Sorry Old Boy, A Machine Could Do Your Job (November 2009)

Poor old Uga VII. The latest in the line of beloved bulldog mascots of the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia) recently passed away, leaving his post temporarily open – and PETA leapt in with the suggestion of a robotic substitute. It’s a fact that bulldogs (originally bred to fight) are so famous for their health problems that the Kennel Club recently voted to change the pedigree standards to breed out its congenital ailments.

That’s PETA’s reasoning for the switcheroo (and we’re sure virtual pet makers Nintendo and Bandai are cheering them on). But why not encourage the University to seek a mascot from America’s brimming animal rescue shelters, guys? Our tails aren’t wagging.

PETA’s Unhappiest Side: Children Yet Again Considered Fair Game (August 2009)

Oh, PETA. However endearingly barmy your antics sometimes are…sometimes you’re just plain frightening. If the image of a throat-cut clown hung upside-down wasn’t graphic enough, PETA members have also been handing out “Unhappy Meals” to visitors of a McDonald’s in Albany, New York, comprising of a t-shirt (“McCruelty”) inside an imitation burger box spattered with fake blood. All this, to children.

Don’t Toy With Your Food: Flinging Fishmongers Catch It From PETA  (June 2009)

Wander through Seattle Pike Place Market at the right time, and you’ll see flying fish. The market’s fishmongers are famous for their sure-handed fish flinging skills, and are consequently much in demand as a dazzling spectacle for hire. When the American Veterinary Medical Association employed them for a motivational conference demonstration, PETA ticked them off in a letter that raged “it’s cruel enough to eat fish, but it literally adds insult to injury to use them as toys for silly stunts.” (Except they didn’t really mean “fish” there).

PETA are fed up to the gills with dead creatures being gruesomely displayed in public. So hey, what about living ones?

Your Name – It’s A Sin (April 2009)

British electronic music duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, better known as the Pet Shop Boys, are currently enjoying a revival of their iconic ’80s sounds. But what’s this? “Pet Shop”? Yes, you guessed it: PETA want them to relabel themselves the Rescue Shelter Boys.

If this attempt had been successful, perhaps rock legend Meat Loaf would now be called “Vegetable Terrine” – but thankfully Tennant and Lowe turned PETA down while graciously agreeing that the request “raises an issue worth thinking about” (and we tend to agree).

By no means are all of PETA’s actions founded on shock tactics, infringements on human dignity and general negativity. We like a lot of what PETA stands for – yet we wish it would grow up a little, because what it could do is surely too important to be ruined by what it actually does. That’s our view. What’s yours?

Images: sabianmaggy, ccharmon, mikebaird, sqeakymarmot, Mrs Logic, EatMeDaily, JasonDeRusha,

The post Oh for PETA’s Sake: 7 (More) Crazy Stunts appeared first on EcoSalon.

We’ve got our eyes on you, KFC.

For years now you’ve been a cornerstone of the fast food movement, bucketing out deep-fried meat and refined carbs in every direction and every conceivable portion size – relentlessly filling American faces for decades.

You’ve taken criticism on the chin, which was brave of you because there’s been plenty of it – from health organisations despairing at your liberal use of hydrogenated oils (prompting you to recently switch to trans fat-free oils, along with all your competitors, of course) to PETA’s fury over your somewhat spotty animal rights record. Which is putting it mildly. Truth be told, as unashamedly bonkers as PETA often are, the term “battery hen” makes me want to strip naked and hand out leaflets until I’m arrested. Yet despite all that, KFC, you’re a survivor.

Look.

You make fast food. It’s fast food. That means, inexorably and unavoidably, the food you make is of the fast variety. It’s not healthy food. You’ve taken great pains in recent years to make your food healthier – but that’s a world away from being good, green people-fuel. Putting aside the continuing problem with your reliance on incarcerated animals living in undeniable squalor and misery, your product falls firmly into the category of Food That Seems A Better Idea After A Few Beers.

It’s generally wildly caloric and bulging with fat. Your latest effort is an admirable step away from the fat fryers, releasing a range of grilled chicken with reduced calories and sodium – all while you’re developing new fried products in the background, of course. But your newly grilled products are not healthy. They’re  just less unhealthy.

So keep your slice of the market – though we suggest that if you wish to expand it, be nicer to animals, since people are big on that nowadays. Grill everything in sight, and continue to keep America (and the world, for that matter) bright-eyed and greasy-lipped.

But don’t pretend to be what you aren’t, please, or we’ll have a new word to fling at you.

Image: pdra

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