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Cooper, who shares she purchased the chicken breast from the budget supermarket Aldi, adds: “lol I think it’s that fake meat but I’m not sure anyways…I ain’t made chicken off the bone since.”
Online users jumped into the comments section, offering their opinions on the matter, some suggesting the chicken was 3D printed or grown in a petri dish.
One argues: “That’s lab grown chicken, it’s a new way they make chicken because of the last few years with the bird flu and resource shortages they didn’t have produce so last year they announced that they found a way to make chicken in a lab and that’s what’s in stores now.”
“GMO lab meat,” writes another.
A third decides it’s “fake I don’t buy it anymore.”
Another user offers a more logical explanation to the shredded chicken breast: “It’s not lab-grown meat or 3D printed meat. It comes from real chickens. The problem is when greedy chicken producers force-feed their chickens growth hormones so they grow way too fast.”
Bigger breasts
The Wall Street Journal reports that along with hard, chewy meat called “woody breast,” “spaghetti meat” is allegedly the result of breeding to make big-breasted chickens grow faster.
So, there is more meat per bird and more profit to be made.
“There is proof that these abnormalities are associated with fast-growing birds,” Dr. Massimiliano Petracci, a professor of agriculture and food science at the University of Bologna in Italy, tells the WSJ.
“Woody breast” and “spaghetti meat” might sound unsettling, but eating them won’t hurt you, according to industry experts.
But it will hurt the chickens, whose big bodies are too large for their little legs to hold.
Chubby chickens
Judging by numbers released from the National Chicken Council, broiler chickens – chickens grown for meat – grow a lot faster than in the past. In 2000, the average bird went to market at 47 days old, weighing 5.03 pounds, and in 2023, the average chicken still goes to market at day 47, but now the chubby chickens weigh in at 6.54 pounds.
Comparing these numbers to almost one century ago, broilers took 112 days to grow to a 2.5-pound market weight in 1925.
