Well, maybe you can call it a chicken.
I’ve watched commercials and seen products in the grocery stores that advertise their products are made from CAGE FREE chickens. Since beginning to eat healthier years ago I have started watching the subtle differences in the way companies market their products. I WAS a Marketing major back in the day. The days before marriage and kids and dogs and cats……..well, you get the picture.
So last night I am watching a mayonnaise commercial advertising they use CAGE FREE eggs. That may sound good, right? But just exactly what does CAGE FREE mean? They live in a hotel? They are not in a wire cage? Do they get sunlight? Are they kept in a barn with millions of other chickens who are fed genetically engineered corn?
Now FREE RANGE chickens ….. well, they are a different story if they are TRULY free range chickens. The only way to be sure that you know you are getting one of those little guys who get to peck around in the barn yard eating all kinds of bugs and things that actually give us PROTEIN and soak up all kinds of sunshine which give us VITAMIN D is to know the producer of your chicken. We buy locally from a co-op and I just refuse to buy any meat from a grocery store! But those CAGE FREE birds…..sorry guys, that one is not working on this gal!
Give me a “pecking around the barnyard chicken” any day of the week.
Go an watch Food, Inc.
You’ll get the picture!
I found this interesting article on labeling as well.
I searched but couldn’t find the video that I saw a couple of years back about the difference in meat between a factory chicken and a free-range “natural” chicken. A chef showed the differences in their bodies too, for eating. The factory chickens are not very good, their meat is totally an un-natural color from muscles and mass not being used because they basically just collapse from being over-weight. The natural chicken was much thinner, had a much more colored meat. It looked a lot healthier. The chef said to look at the store chicken, you’ll often see a little piece of skin removed from the breast (or a brown mark). That is the part of their body that sits in chicken pee all day because the chickens can’t get up and move.
They have a bad life. Thanks for this post.
Oh I wish I new the video you were talking about. YUCK. I honestly almost gag walking down the meat isle in the grocery store now. We, thankfully, have a source for free range chickens as well as all natural beef. I must buy a 1/2 cow at a time but I have meat for about 6 months! Yippee.