Vani Hari (a.k.a. The Food Babe) is a regular contributor on 100 Days of Real Food. To learn more about Vani check her out on “Our Team” page.
Long before I became the Food Babe I used to be addicted to Chick-fil-A. I remember the first time I tasted it – it was at the mall when I was very little and they used to have the free samples. There was a lady walking around outside of the store with hot, fresh pieces of newly fried chicken on little toothpicks. It was free so of course my parents let me try it. The smell alone was intoxicating, not to mention the taste. What continued for many years was countless meals of Chick-fil-A during my childhood followed by almost daily consumption in college. Thinking about it now, even though I haven’t had it in what seems like a decade…I still know what a Chick-fil-A sandwich smells and tastes like.
This is why I chose the mall to begin my latest food investigation. A lot of people who generally don’t eat fast food still eat Chick-fil-A. A lot of people say “I only take my kids to Chick-fil-A once in a while.” Countless moms and dads take their kids to Chick-fil-A, thinking it’s better than other fast food places. When I first wrote the post Chick-Fil-A or Chemical-Fil-A? last summer, so many of my closest friends and family members were downright shocked at the list and type of ingredients Chick-fil-A uses – which are similar to big chains like McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s. Back in the day, restaurants were not required to list ingredients, there was no google, and we were all pretty much kept in the dark about what was in our food. Now that times are different, and most of the information is readily available at our fingertips and in most stores themselves, I wanted to know how many parents have actually looked at the ingredients in Chick-fil-A. So I asked.
I started off the questioning with “Why did you bring your family to Chick-fil-A today?” I interviewed 30 families in total between a mall based Chick-fil-A and a popular standalone store.
These were the top three (food related) answers.
1. “My kids asked for it.” The information I am about to share may make you think twice about giving in to their requests. 
One of the main ingredients of Chick-Fil-A’s nuggets (regular and the new grilled ones) which is listed twice is Monosodium Glutamate, a.k.a. MSG. The amount of MSG that food companies can put in your food is not regulated. MSG is an excitotoxin that can excite brain cells to death. MSG can cause adverse reactions in some people including “skin rashes, itching, hives, nausea, vomiting, migraine headaches, asthma, heart irregularities, depression and even seizures.”
As a follow up question, it was natural for me to ask the parents who first introduced their child to Chick-fil-A. The answer was always pointed back at them. The parents introduced Chick-fil-A to their children. Which reminds of me of one of Lisa’s older posts – Kids eat processed food because parents give it them. I couldn’t agree more with Lisa’s thoughts here. “Young children have to rely on their parents to provide good food for them.” You have to admit, parents have a lot of control over what their children eat whether they take on this responsibility or not.
2. “It’s better quality and tastes fresh.” It may taste good, but I have to question whether adding MSG to meat from conventional chickens that are sometimes given antibiotics is quality? If you look at a typical Chick-fil-A sandwich to see what keeps it “fresh” you’ll find close to 100 ingredients, 18 of them being different types of preservatives.
I wonder if these preservatives could keep a Chick-fil-A sandwich pretty much intact the same way it kept a Big Mac intact for 30 days exposed to air, illustrated by Morgan Spurlock’s experiment with McDonald’s during the movie Super Size Me?
The FDA allows food companies to add these preservatives in limited quantities. However, they do not prohibit combining different food items together. For example, let’s take TBHQ which stands for “Tertiary Butylhydroquinone.” TBHQ is a chemical made from butane and can only be used at a rate of 0.02 percent of the total oil in a product. This ingredient is listed twice, once in the chicken and once in the bun. It’s easy to see how the typical American diet can result in one big whopping dose of preservatives in a given day. Chick-fil-A abides by the required FDA limits, but limiting TBHQ to a certain percentage is the same logic the FDA used when allowing a product to still contain 0.5 grams of transfat and be labeled “transfat free.” Fresh, as you can see, can be a chemically derived illusion.
3. (Many versions of…) “If I turn in the toy from the kid’s meal I can get an ice cream cone that my kid loves and I don’t have to deal with all these annoying toys everywhere in my house.” Having less toys may sound better, but check out what’s in Chick-fil-A’s “Icedream.” This little treat has all sorts of processed sugar, transfat, caramel coloring, and artificial food coloring x 2. Since when did you need to color vanilla ice cream white? I couldn’t find out exactly what kind of caramel colors Chick-fil-A sources, but the caramel colors that some fast food chains use in soda is linked to cancer. California recently added caramel coloring to a list of carcinogens that caused soda manufacturers to reformulate their ingredients to avoid a cancer warning label on their product. 
After speaking to these families, I ended each conversation with one last question. I asked “Have you ever reviewed the ingredients listed in the Chick-fil-A nutrition guide?” No one had. Not even one family out of the 30 that I interviewed. I tried to hand out as many guides as possible but only a handful of families accepted them. How many of these families would think eating MSG, TBHQ, artificial colors, and caramel coloring is just fine? I made it a point to approach each family with an open heart and kindness, but when I was done for the day, the whole exercise left me sad, depleted and reminded me that we have a lot more work to do in this country to educate people about REAL FOOD.
I want to leave you with something you can make the next time you have a craving or your kid “asks”. Here is a REAL FOOD organic recipe that tastes like Chick-fil-A so you can truly provide fresh to your family. Enjoy :)
Comments have been closed on this article, which was written by Vani Hari. If you have a question or comment you can reach her at http://FoodBabe.com.
School Lunch Roundup!
To be clear are minute amounts of MSG in ALL seasonings and/ or batter. Many of the additives you listed are in ALL foods unless you grow it yourself. I personally work for chickfila and never eat anything that’s fried due to the fact that fried foods come with the additives, whether your frying your own chicken or not.
chickfilA HAS GOOD FOOD
I am not a Chick-fil-a employee, or care enough about a company to defend them. However, I find it stupid to compare Chick-fil-a to McDonalds. ALL fastfood is bad for you, more or less and should never be eaten in excess. However comparing the ingredients and quality of food to McDonalds directly is a sin. McDonadls quality of food is horrible and is literally so “juiced up” with crap to keep it “edible” I barely consider it food. Atleast choosing chick-fil-a you know underneth the crap there is some actual chicken breast that was just freshly prepared and cooked. At the end of the day is it ok to eat fastfood? Sure if your having a sandwhich once in a while and in that scenario Chick-fil-a is a better option.
Thank you for this information. Alot of people do not realize just how harmful Chic Fil A, Hardys, McDonalda, as well as a number of other fast food chains are.
Sure its chicken and not beef but that does not mean that it is any more healthier because it is still a fast food restaurant. I used to like KFC as well before the rumour about torturing chickens.Speaking on that,it was speculated that Chic Fil A started that rumour just to get ahead of the chicken food chain. That doesnt make either of them healthy though. Where ever there are fast food chains, there will be obesity and hypertention.
The days when fried chicken was synonymous with a certain white-haired southern gentleman are over, at least in the U.S. A new champion has claimed KFC’s long-held chicken crown: Chick-fil-A.
http://nashville.com/news/nashville-business/chick-fil-a-is-the-new-king-of-chicken
You’re so awesome! I don’t think I have read anything like that before.
So good to discover someone with a few unique thoughts on this topic.
Really.. thank you for starting this up.
This web site is something that is needed on the web, someone with a bit of originality!
I appreciate the efforts by “Food Babe” to education the public on nutrition, food ingredients, and health-related complications from the above.
Over the last few years, I have become more and more attuned to what I put in my mouth. From GMO “foods”, to the additives, preservatives, steroids, antibiotics, etc. that most processed foods are filled with, I am far more sensitive to what I eat.
But I also understand that life is always a series of choices. The more educated we are to those choices, the better-off we are. In that knowledge, we have to understand that some business models and conveniences are really impossible without some degree of processing and preservatives. Short of on-sight slaughter of organically-grown food animals and bakeries, there is just no way to transport, prepare, cook, and serve all the convenient foods offered in Chick-fil-A and other fast food establishments. Likewise, many of us do not live where one can easily or conveniently buy less “tampered-with” foods. Some degree of processing is practically unavoidable. So we have to made decisions – decisions on our grocery shopping (how often, where, when, how much travel are we willing to do, how much can we spend/budget), as well as what foods we might be willing to ingest for convenience sake.
In my family’s situation, we try to make as many healthy and smart decisions as we can, but also recognize that some degree of additives/processing is just part of the reality for our food. So – make the best decisions you can, based on the information you have. Try to limit the exposure as much as possible to highly-processed foods, and buy/prepare the best you can afford and can make time to deal with.
But we have also realized that one can get carried away in every latest food fad/craze that comes along, bankrupting your budget and having negligible positive impact on your health and safety in the process.
Thanks again, Food Babe, for your efforts at getting that knowledge in our hands – it really does help!
For the record, Chick-Fil-A did not condemn homosexuality, but the owner of the privately held corporation, Dan. Cathy said, and I quote, “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit”. No mention of condemning homosexuality, although that is a logical conclusion. Why is it so hard for people of any opposing opinion to just agree to disagree? I, along with everyone else in this country, am entitled to my own religious beliefs, as protected by the US Constitution. If those happen to offend you, then I’m sorry, but don’t make me out to be a monster just because I choose to believe in the Bible or believe in something you don’t believe.
I’m late to the party on this post but thanks for the information. We like Chick-fil-a but I hadn’t looked closely at the ingredients. Guilty. However – I do know from experience that I can make pretty tasty faux-CFA nuggets at home with none of the icky ingredients listed above. I guess we’ll stick to those!
MSG hurts me. It causes pain and swelling and rest room runs, and it makes my ears ring.
Just saw a news segment today (12/4/13) that Chick-fil-a is taking out all of their food dyes and preservatives due to a popular internet food blog’s article about them. ;)