Silly Putty ingredient found in McNuggets

A recent CNN investigation found that the same chemicals found in Silly Putty can be found in McNuggets:

American McNuggets (190 calories, 12 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat for 4 pieces) contain the chemical preservative tBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, a petroleum-based product. They also contain dimethylpolysiloxane, "an anti-foaming agent" also used in Silly Putty.

Yummy.

All McNuggets not created equal [CNN's The Chart]

I'm a contributing editor here at Boing Boing. I also have a blog (TokyoMango), a book (Urawaza), and I freelance for Wired, Make, the NY Times Magazine, PRI's Studio360, etc. I'm @tokyomango on Twitter.

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Pants McCracky

Yep, leave it to the Internet to completely miss the point in service of being “right.”
acrocker

http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/bread.html

More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread eaters.
Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever and influenza ravaged whole nations.
Anonymous

Both the U.K. Chicken McNugget and the U.S. Chicken McNugget are made to McDonaldâ€™s gold standard. This means they are made from the highest quality ingredients and safety standards.
Chicken McNuggets in both countries are made with all white meat chicken.

To maintain freshness, TBHQ is a commonly used, FDA-approved antioxidant added to the cooking oil of Chicken McNuggets.

To prevent splattering, we add a small amount of dimethylpolysiloxane, a common FDA-approved ingredient, to the cooking oil of Chicken McNuggets.

For more straightforward facts about the quality of our food, visit http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/see_what_we_are_made_of/your_questions_answered.html

Lisa McComb
McDonaldâ€™s Corporation
Sutra

I’m lovin’ it!
Anonymous

sO is this badd Or gOOd ?
Anonymous

Still taste good XD
Tis the USA ofc, UK ingredients change… same with Coke..
Anonymous

TNT contains peanuts.
Tap water contains copper, lead, and iron.
Water is only one oxygen atom from peroxide.
It’s not amazing that two different things have similar chemicals in them.
Thebes

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder, in a paranoid kind of way, if things like “anti-foaming agents” aren’t really put into our food as population controlling agents, or pharmaceutical profit enhancing agents. Is it just coincidence that they are disproportionately in foods consumed by the lower classes?
- Anonymous
  
  It’s not coincidence; the food that is produced in bulk quantities is cheaper to buy than the high-priced organic food that the “upper classes” consume. Many lower class families also live off of home-grown or locally-grown produce and meat. Would you supposing that these are being injected by the government?
pelrun

I can pronounce ‘hemlock’, so I should be okay to eat it, right?
- Chesterfield
  
  pelrun- that depends. Is it natural hemlock?
Anonymous

Sometimes when you eat skin-on potatoes or organic carrots you might eat a tiny bit of sand. DMSO is just as dangerous (i.e. it is completely safe).
Look at the active ingredient in Gas-X …. it’s DMSO! How great would it be if all gas-inducing foods had anti-bloating substances pre-mixed in?
ike

Whether or not you choose to eat it, Dimethylpolysiloxane, AKA Polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydimethylsiloxane ) is a fascinating example of polymer chemistry. Check out the long list of applications on the wikipedia page!

So many different applications are possible with just one chemical because the physical properties change a lot with the molecular weight (average length of the polymer chains) in a given sample of the stuff. Short chains will get you a slippery lubricant (used for lubricating latex condoms!) and long chains will get tangled up with each other and give you Silly Putty.
Matt Deckard

My organic apple juice contains an ingredient also found in film development solutions. Why should I care?
- Anonymous
  
  Cyanide is organic too. Just because it’s an organic compound doesn’t mean it isn’t horrible for you.
- mdh
  
  ask your grandchildren, should you happen to meet them.
Anonymous

It’s Silicone they put into foods that are making people sick! Fried Chicken is the main one noting it is used as an anti-foaming agent. Think of how sick a woman gets with silicone breast implants if one was to leak ..well there’s the symptoms you get from eating it! It attacts your immune system causing autoimmune diseases which are really caused from the poisoning. Beware of what you intake and always read the labels! No animal testing here.. strictly the general public is being tested! Be aware!!
franko

well, who would want foamy chicken mcnuggets?
Anonymous

Too bad they don’t copy news print when you smash them against a piece of paper, because that would be one heck of a happy meal.
Chevan

“As a general rule, though, she advocates not eating any food with an ingredient you canâ€™t pronounce.”

That’s a terrible rule. Anyone who took intro to organic chemistry should have no problem pronouncing either of those chemicals.

And while they mention the limitation on the oil percentage of dimethylpolysiloxane (0.02%), and the dose that causes health effects (1 gram), they leave it up to the reader to do the math to find out that 4 nuggets will contain at most 0.0024 grams of dimethylpolysiloxane. You’d have to eat more than 1,666 nuggets in one sitting to get anywhere near that quoted dose.

I expected better from CNN.
- Anonymous
  
  I think that policy makes perfect sense, as if you’ve taken enough organic chemistry to be able to pronounce the names of the chemicals then you should at least be literate enough be able research them to see if they are safe to eat. The reverse of this policy is obviously not true. I mean, I challenge you to find me a single person who can’t pronounce arsenic.
- mdh
  
  I expected better from you Chevan, someone who wants to sound like they know what they’re talking about.
  
  At 1g, half of the subjects get the noted effect.
  at less that 1g, less than half.
  at almost none, almost none show the effect.
  
  SCIENCE!
  
  I applaud your effort to hold companies responsible only if they only hurt half of us (+1, of course).
  - Chevan
    
    Given that the dosage in one serving of nuggets is minuscule, I didn’t think it was necessary to go into that detail.
    
    And I honestly don’t understand why you’re saying I’m trying to “hold companies responsible only if they only hurt half of us.” That’s ridiculous. I’m not arguing half a gram versus a gram, I’m arguing a speck versus a gram.
    
    I’m somewhat offended that you think I intended to defend the company at the expense of the health of the general public, because that was never my intent. My intent was to make a quick judgment as to whether there was a reasonable health risk from eating normal serving sizes; such a judgment can be made completely independently of the origin of the nuggets.
  - Anonymous
    
    See now, it’s people like this that might benefit from a CNN article like the one above. His “Science” is uncanny and clearly he now believe he shouldn’t eat the deep friend chicken nuggets anymore. *applauds*
- Phrosty
  
  I was about to say the same thing. It’s a lame rule. It could even be applied to ingredients with names that may seem more foreign to some. For example, sometimes the Latin names of spices/vegetables/herbs/et c. are used in the ingredients list. Many people have trouble pronouncing Latin (whether ecclesiastical or classical). Yet, just because they are incapable of properly pronouncing the words, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t consume the ingredients. Naturally, it all depends on the safety of the ingredient, not whether or not you have poor reading skills.
Anonymous

perhaps that explains why silly putty is so delicious…
- Anonymous
  
  You just made me LOL!
TheGibson

Yeah. This just seems sensationalist… like a Digg headline. The article is worth a read, but just barely.
abstract_reg

Does this mean I can eat silly putty again?
- Felton
  
  Does this mean I can eat silly putty again?
  
  Is it good? I was always more of a Play-Doh connaisseur.
soubriquet

And a product found to cause unconsciousness and death, has been found in Coca Cola……
Water.

We know deep-fried fast-food is not good for us. We know bulk food preparation is likely to entail use of products designed to make the industrial process cheaper, faster, safer.
It’s not exactly a surprise that traces of the anti-foaming agent added to frying oils end up in the oily food.

It’s a bit of a non-story really. Let’s paraphrase it.
“Fast food giants use industrial additives”.

Big surprise.
Anonymous

wow, that’s kinda disturbing. but they’re still good, i guess. lol.
S2

“As a general rule, though, she advocates not eating any food with an ingredient you canâ€™t pronounce.”

Is that with mouth full, or empty?
- TheMatt
  
  Or what if said person had, I don’t know, a Chemistry background like I do. Therefore, I can pronounce just about any chemical’s name, and correctly.
  
  Does that mean I can eat everything?
  - Jonathan Badger
    
    Exactly. This is why Pollan’s advice is pretty useless and anti-intellectual — it only works if you are scientifically illiterate. Another great piece of advice he gives is only to eat things your grandparents would recognize. Not very appealing if your grandparents were American WASPs of the World War II generation — they mostly just ate beef and potatoes. They would only go unwillingly to Chinese restaurants and I’m pretty sure they never ate Thai or Indian (my favorite cuisines) in their lives.
Anonymous

Years ago, TBHQ was derived from cow’s tongues and there was a bit of controversy in the Kosher community over the use of it in food products. It’s been a long while since I’ve looked into it as an ingredient, but apparently, somewhere along the way, it was found more cost effective to construct it out of petroleum. That being said, if one had no issue with it when it was sourced from cows, why would one care if it now comes from petroleum, as ultimately, it’s the same chemical?
dculberson

Both ingredients are relatively common food additives. Singling out McNuggets and comparing them to Silly Putty is disingenuous and just plain dumb.

As pointed out, dihydrogen monoxide is a serious problem in high or uncontrolled doses, it’s a chemical component of many solvents used in almost every industrial process, and yet they allow it to flow nearly unchecked into all of our homes in quantities sufficient to kill many times over.

The game may be fun, but it’s not one responsible humans with an audience (Ie, CNN) should play.
Gutierrez

I think the question isn’t about quantity of additives but why if the products are made without them in a healthier manner already on a country wide scale in Europe why not standardize to that in the US and push another load of ‘Healthier Food’ BS down our throats? It’s good marketing.
- Rayonic
  
  Is everything healthier in Europe somehow? They have McDonalds over there too, you know. The only significant difference I can think of is Europe’s superstitions about GMO food.
  - Anonymous
    
    In Europe the McNuggets are deliciously foamy.
  - Gutierrez
    
    “Is everything healthier in Europe somehow?”
    
    No, I hear anything from France is terrible for you.
    
    Still, cut out anything the news sensationalizes, add a marginal reduction in fat, and possibly lower costs by standardizing all production. It’s just playing into the hands of their ability to market the same old, with no real special changes as new, exciting and ‘healthy.’
Anonymous

This is America. You eat til you’re sick and then sue the company that sold you the food.
Anonymous

I can’t believe all of these comments defending McDonald’s. What is wrong with you people?!
- Anonymous
  
  So gross…Kind of glad I don’t eat those O.o
Felton

I don’t see the word “chicken” anywhere in this post. Have they finally dropped the pretense?
AdrenalineSleep

Every time I see one of these things I want to run out and eat it. I remember walking out of Super Size Me and wanting to eat a big mac like nobody’s business! The key difference is moderation, people get sick because they eat an abundance of this crap. While it is engineered food stuffs, it is (sometimes) tasty engineered food stuffs none the less. Don’t eat it all the time and you’ll be fine.

I also have a problem with making one thing seem terrible because it is in something else. OH MY GOD, I CAN’T DRINK WATER, THERE’S WATER IN CEMENT!!

And at the end of the day, seriously, as franko sed: “well, who would want foamy chicken mcnuggets?”
Artimus Mangilord

This is the type of headline and content that has deterred me from patronizing CNN’s site.
Anonymous

Is it only McNuggets or are all chicken nuggets involved? Enquiring minds need to know!!
Zan

Although some of it is removed during the frying process, McDonalds nuggets also contain significant amounts of oxidane, which is the main ingredient in most weed killers.
chenille

Regarding eating chemicals you can’t pronounce and that are dangerous in high doses, I’d like to repeat a point from Chemical Food Safety: A Scientist’s Perspective by Riviere:

Considering this background, would you eat a product if the label listed the following chemical ingredients: allyl cyanide, 1-cyano-3-methylsulfinylpropane, caffeic acid, allyl isothiocyanate, and 4-methylthiobutyl isothiocyanate? In total, this product contains almost 50 additional sinister-sounding chemicals. These ingredients are present in concentrations up to 100 to 1000 times greater than those of the pesticide residues discussed in Chapter 3. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciencesâ€™ (NIEHS) National Toxicology Program has determined that some of these chemicals are carcinogenic in rats.

Now you are probably thinking that since this product contains such nasty ingredients, documented by scientific studies to cause cancer in laboratory animals, it must no longer be on the market. Maybe itâ€™s a rat poison. Surprise! This product is organically grown, 100% natural cabbage taken right from the local health food store. This is the same cabbage that was discussed in Chapter 4 as possibly being protective against colon and lung cancer. I believe that the uneasiness that most readers would feel when reading this hypothetical â€œlabelâ€ is a clear illustration of our phobia for chemical nomenclature. If this were a synthetic chemical, the media may have reported your consumption of this “product” as being part of a long-term human experiment, testing the effects of lifetime consumption of the rat carcinogen allyl isothiocyanate. However, since the “product” is coleslaw and the “sponsor” is Mother Nature, there is no story.

Harmful chemicals are something to be taken seriously. I am not sure this type of reporting helps with that.
- mdh
  
  Most of my ancestors evolved eating cabbage (and the related brussel sprouts, broccoli, etc…), as well as burned meat, so my liver is finely tuned by evolution to eliminate these known hazards.
  
  But I’m farly certain none of my ancestors ate bombardier beetles (the natural source of tBHQ), nor did they evolve eating the other petroleum products mentioned.
  
  tBHQ IS petroleum btw.
Anonymous

Real question is do people still go to McDonalds?! Really?
Anonymous

give me a reason NOT to eat them now. YUM (:
Chesterfield

I also despise advice like “if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it”. I was hoping all the anti-intellectuals would disappear with the Bush administration. No suck luck. I’m having trouble remembering a time when it was a good thing to be smart.
Chesterfield

Kris- Pollan? The article is quoting Marion Nestle. Regardless, advocating fear of the unknown is anti-intellectual. I’m tired of it. I might be stupid, but I’m willing to learn.
- Jonathan Badger
  
  Right. But the “don’t eat things you can’t pronounce” rule Nestle is quoting is Pollan’s (even if unattributed)
mdh

Both ingredients are relatively common food additives.

true! But is that a good idea? Take that tertiary butyl group off (one carbon and three hydrogens) and the compound is hydroquinone – a “probable human carcinogen”.

Many things are. Many many many things. A little teeny bit of each, every day, adds up.

Our systems did not evolve to consume this substance (and SO many others we eat every day) at ANY concentration.

Be glad we can usually detoxify and eliminate them.

The game may be fun,

The game where you focus on the argument and not the topic? Yeah, great fun, totally helpful, and not what the man wants you to do – not at all.
- Jerril
  
  true! But is that a good idea? Take that tertiary butyl group off (one carbon and three hydrogens) and the compound is hydroquinone – a “probable human carcinogen”.
  
  Please tell me how one carbon and three hydrogens fall off randomly. Unless it happens in the cooking process (reacting with something else that you probably shouldn’t eat) or in your digestion (a more likely scenario but I’m not seeing how it would happen right now) saying “ZOMG IF WE MESS UP THE MOLECULE AND GET A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ONE IT COULD CAUSE CANCER” is, while factually true, firmly under the category of “Damn lies and statistics”.
  - mdh
    
    Answer: in your own liver. Your poor abused liver.
    
    “Demethylation is the chemical process resulting in the removal a methyl group (CH3) from a molecule. In biochemical systems, this process is often catalyzed by an enzyme such as one of the Cytochrome P450 (CYP) family of liver enzymes and by fungal aromatic peroxygenases such as Agrocybe aegerita peroxygenase”
    
    Source – Wikipedia
    Emphasis – mine
    
    By the way, Yes, I AM an environmental toxicologist.
    - Jerril
      
      A butyl is C4H9, a methyl group is -CH3 – I’m not seeing how you can remove the butyl by demethylation – there’s leftover carbons.
    - loonquawl
      
      I love the way ” “anti-foaming agent” ” is treated as if it was something neigh-dangerous. It’s stuff that prevents foaming. Get a grip. Every time my grandmother dishes up her terrific rhubarb-cake, i am dancing with death, in comparison with eating a chicken wing.
    - Anonymous
      
      Rather than speculating what it might cause, you could look at what it actually does. tBHQ can cause cancer in high doses, and as an antioxidant can help inhibit it in low doses. As always, the dose makes the poison.
      
      That’s a bigger concern than whether the compound is synthetic (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmful) or natural (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ok), or how many syllables its name has. Using those as a way to evaluate things is bringing confusion to an important issue.
- dculberson
  
  The argument is an integral component of the topic. Making a poor argument means your point is not communicated.
  
  The only point I took from their argument was that they have some odd transitive property of ingredients in their brain. As if “ingredient in substance A, also in substance B. Substance B = not food, so substance A = not safe” is a valid thought process. But it’s a bad argument, bad logic, and didn’t convince me that the food is unsafe.
  - mdh
    
    I see that. I also see that you’re not engaging on the point of the post, which is that we eat bad bad things fed to us by people who claim their food is healthful.
    
    can you focus on that primary dishonesty rather than the secondary dishonesty deployed to draw your attention?
    
    Will you remain more fascinated by the curtain than the man behind it?
    - Anonymous
      
      I also see that you’re not engaging on the point of the post, which is that we eat bad bad things fed to us by people who claim their food is healthful.
      
      I thought we were talking about McDonald’s.
    - dculberson
      
      I’m more interested in discussing “the curtain,” honestly, since the last time I ate McNuggets was probably around 20-25 years ago. They’re gross and I don’t doubt they’re very bad for you. But the argument needs to be coherent, on target, and most of all correct in order to be truly long-term persuasive.
      
      The “primary” versus “secondary” dishonestly glosses over the fact that it’s still dishonesty. And lying is not a good way to persuade people; both the old sayings “the end doesn’t justify the means” and “two wrongs don’t make a right” apply here.
- Wes
  
  Oh my gosh brilliance!
  
  If you add 2 oxygen and 1 sulfur atoms to water, then drink it you’ll die too… We better stop drinking water or our insides might start melting should it pick up those extra atoms…
  
  Give me a break, we all know that changing the atomic structure of a chemical will change it into a *gasp* different chemical that may or may not be harmful to humans.
Anonymous

As long as it taste good, I’m fine. Haha.
k88dad

And this is why I DON’T watch CNN.

Eat less processed food. Eat less food. Exercise more.
sleazy_demure

I live in South Korea. If I followed this rule I would starve to death.

Though, I could always east silly putty. And IIRC that isn’t so bad.
Anonymous

“Boing Boing” is right.

heh.
Kris

KFC has an anti-foaming agent in their biscuits as well. In fact, it only takes a few ingredients to make biscuits, but KFC’s long list of ingredients for their biscuits is ridiculous. Make them with natural ingredients, and you wouldn’t need anti-foaming agents.

Pollan isn’t trying to be anti-intellectual with this rule. What he’s saying is this: let’s get back to basics. Flour. Water. Egg. Milk. Butter. All normal, natural ingredients, not chemicals created in a laboratory or mined from rock.
- Anonymous
  
  Flour, water, eggs, milk, butter can no longer be relied upon as “natural”.
  Flour is infused with many chemicals to keep it white, fluffy and shelf stable.
  Water is laden with hundreds of chemicals from the “purification” process, which are only able to remove some of the toxins.
  Milk and butter often come from cows that have been fed GMO grain, antibiotics, growth hormones and other drugs to keep them fat, lactating and free of disease.
  
  Our entire food supply is in jeopardy. Don’t take something “natural” for granted.
  
  Anything we can do (including not eating processed foods) to lower our toxic load is advisable. Tiny doses of these known toxins from EVERY aspect of our lives add up. It’s not just from food, it’s from our air, water, clothes, furniture, cars, toys, phones, TVs, pens, computers, toothpaste, face wash, shampoo…the list goes on.
  Eat the chicken nugget – go ahead, it won’t kill you instantly. But don’t be ignorant about it, and don’t pretend you are making some revolutionary social point by poisoning yourself slowly.
Anonymous

The real question is: did they find any meat in there?
Bionicrat2

Here’s Jamie Oliver showing some kids (and adults at home) how chicken nuggets are made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJey_C6GL0k
Anonymous

This is some kind of tie-in with Toy Story 3, no?
Jerril

But I’m farly certain none of my ancestors ate bombardier beetles (the natural source of tBHQ), nor did they evolve eating the other petroleum products mentioned.

tBHQ IS petroleum btw.

No, it’s a phenol. There’s a lot of letters and chemistry difference there.
d913

Reminds me of Sunday dinners at Grandma’s as a kid… always at least one argument about which silicone-based organic polymer to add to the chicken…
Anonymous

It makes perfect sense that an anti-foaming agent would be used. Twenty years ago, one of the aesthetic complaints of the McNugget was the air bubbles caused by squirting the chicken puree into the nugget forming device.
Anonymous

“They also contain dimethylpolysiloxane, “an anti-foaming agent” also used in Silly Putty.”

This has been known since “Supersize Me” came out and listed McNugget ingredients in the movie. A little research also shows that this stuff (known also as DPMS) is used as a shock absorber fluid, breast implant filler (now banned because of leaks causing cancer), silicone caulking (the vinegar smell), the fluid in commercial heating systems (“hot water” systems), and an ingredient in the treatment of head lice.

Nice stuff…
Anonymous

Why is that picture of chicken nuggets making me hungry?
efergus3

One of many such: http://www.folded.com/cbdm/
vitriolix

OMG, they actually use a road deicer too!! SALT!!!
Anonymous

Apparently CNN has missed the fact that petrochemicals are purposefully added to A LOT of food. For example, different candies, especially of the gummy kind (and fruit snacks, too) are often made with mineral oil because it helps keep them soft. Except there’s no way for our bodies to digest or absorb mineral oil. Paraffin used as a protective coating on candies, too.
Anonymous

Dimethylpolysiloxane is also the main ingredient in X-Gas and other OTC carminatives.
- Beanolini
  
  poly(dimethylsiloxane) is also the main ingredient in most OTC medications for infant colic (e.g. Infacol, Dentinox).
  
  But I guess a fair amount of silly putty is probably eaten by children, as well.
alxr

Good grief, people. You’re all going to die; you might as well get a Happy Meal toy out of it.

(Seriously, those things are delicious. Moderation is important in everything. Everything is toxic in high enough doses. Get over it.)
purple-stater

Very disingenuous headline.

How about another one declaring that one of the most common food preservatives is what disposable diapers are made of?
Daemon

Everything contains something that’s either outright bad for you, or potentially bad for you in the right dosages. I would have been more shocked if there weren’t chemicals in the McNuggets.
Anonymous

So does that mean if I smoosh a chicken nugget onto newspaper print that it’ll copy it?!