Tyson Foods works with McDonald’s on transparency campaign

The age old question of what goes into a chicken McNugget at McDonald’s is answered by Tyson Foods in an effort to help the fast food giant with its ongoing transparency campaign.

Tyson Foods allowed McDonald’s to produce and share a video on You Tube that walks consumers through one of five Tyson further processing facilities that makes chicken McNuggets for McDonald’s.

Tyson said it begins with white meat chicken that is cut from the tenderloin, breast and rib meat. Next the white meat is ground with a small amount of chicken skin added back for additional flavor and juiciness as white meat chicken tends to be dry. Tyson said there are no feet, beaks, bones or dark meat in the grind. 

Amy Steward, meat scientist at Tyson Foods’ Obion County, Tennessee chicken processing plant, said the ingredients added to the meat grind are available on McDonald’s website and they include water, sodium phosphate and food starch for added moisture. Flavor enhancers include salt, wheat starch, dextrose and citric acid. Steward said rosemary extract and safflower oil are added to preserve freshness.

When the final blended product is complete it has a similar texture to coarsely ground beef. The McNuggets are pressed into four shapes — bell, boot, ball and bone — and coated in a light tempura batter. The foodservice product is partially fried to create the crunchy breaded texture and then flash frozen to preserve flavor. The product is fully fried on location by the restaurants.

Tyson said it routinely checks for quality each hour at the plant, frying up a batch of McNuggets in the test kitchen onsite and then sampling them for taste and appearance.

In other news Wednesday, McDonald’s released plans to trim down it value dollar menu come January. McDonald’s is cutting eight items from its menu beginning in January to boost service speed. The fast-food giant is also reducing its number of extra value meals from 16 to 11 as it seeks to turn around its U.S. unit.

The company has struggled recently to turn around its performance with comparable restaurant sales dropping 4.6% in November. Year to date, the company's stock is down 6%.