Laugh it Off

I chowed some KFC last week and an hour later felt even hungrier than before the meal. I tuned myself ‘nooit, it’s time Jou Ma se Purse investigates the Colonel, and his secret herbs and spices recipe wat my so hoender honger laat maak’. Forget ‘Finger lickin good’, KFC are ‘Finger Pointin Bad’! What I learnt has changed my life, so if you schmaak your Streetwise Burger, then read no further…

KFC pumps lank monosodium glutumate (MSG) food additive into their food. MSG is like food tik: the more you have, the more you want, and it never leaves you satisfied. Marketed as a “flavour enhancer”, what MSG actually does is fool your tongue into thinking it’s about to taste food that is nutrititious.

Our taste buds are mos smart like this: in the same way that they have fat receptors that detect fat and others that can spot carbohydrates (as a way of telling what is actually edible food from, say, a piece of bog roll), when they check the MSG coming along in your mouth they think that it is free glutamic acid, which indicates protein in a food.

Your taste buds then tell your pancreas, next to your stomach, to start producing insulin – which is needed to break down the glucose in your stomach. The glucose is the blood sugar that is now in your tummy from the food that you have just digested. Glucose is like petrol for our bodies – it keeps the engine running.

So when you have a packet of dehydrated chicken noodle soup that has lots of MSG in it, your pancreas is in overdrive producing insulin as it thinks your stomach is busy processing lots of protein-rich kos. The blood sugar drops as a result of the insulin flood and this suppresses your appetite. So those little flakes in your chicken noodle soup may well be pieces of toilet paper with MSG sprinkled on it, because as smart as your body is, it can’t tell the difference between that and real food. All it can tell you, is that an hour later it is still hungry.

Sure enough, there are many culprits in the food industry that are milking MSG as an “anti-appetite” suppressant for all it is worth. KFC is just one of the guilty parties that would rather create the illusion of feeding you battery farmed chickens sprinkled with food tik rather than going to the expense of rearing free range chickens that are naturally high in protein, and thus actually good for us.

I phoned KFC’s Customer Careline to find out more about the conditions on the chicken farms here in SA. You know, how well do they live before they die? I was told that KFC buys all their chickens from Rainbow Chickens, that Rainbow Chickens have their own inspectors which inspect their farms, and that a manager would return my call immediately. I’m still waiting for the call, but in the mean time I have learnt a lot more about chickens, not to mention what happens to them before they become a tasty KFC burger.

Animal behaviourists tell us that chickens are smarter than cats and dogs. They understand cause-and effect relationships, say for example that an object still exists even when it is hidden from view, or that if they push a certain button they will get food. This even makes them smarter than small children. Chickens make over thirty different ‘cluck’ sounds as a way to comminucate with each other. In their natural surroundings they form social hierarchies, and each chicken will know its place in the ‘pecking order’ in a group of up to 100 birds. Each chicken is an individual, with its own personality.

Rainbow Chickens state on their website that they use “broiler farms” and that  “broilers are birds that are grown purely for meat production by providing them with an energy and protein rich, highly nutritious diet.” These are effectively battery farms where the chickens are kept in hokkies that doesn’t allow them to establish any kind of social hierarchy.

KFC is an international fast food brand that can’t simply buy in their chickens and claim ignorance as to the terrible conditions of the farms. If you are ready to think twice about eating KFC, go to www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com and watch the Pamela Anderson video that details the atrocious conditions that these chickens endure. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that stink of ammonia, and their beaks get chopped off for easier force-feeding (the equivalent in human pain of having your finger chopped off). From being fed growth hormones which makes them top heavy, usually crippling them, through to how they are dropped into blistering hot water to remove their feathers while they are still conscious and able to feel the pain, the chickens suffer horrifically for two months until they are old enough to be killed by having their throats slit.

I love my meat just as much as the next man, but I’m beginning to think that unless I’m man enough to kill the animal myself, I’m not man enough to eat it. Colonel Sanders may look a lot like the devil, but I am no longer tempted. From the MSG soaked food to the way they run their business, KFC is an evil I can no longer stomach.