If you've ever wondered how McDonald's make their chicken nuggets taste so great, the answer is a concoction of around 40 ingredients — including dextrose, a sugar also used by shoe makers to make leather more pliable. Oh, JOYS.

Food photographer Dwight Eschliman and food writer Steve Ettlinger have teamed up to create a new book, which deconstructs different foods and shows what the breakdown of ingredients actually look like when they're separated and photographed next to each other.

The results are MIND-BLOWING and also make us feel a bit guilty about that 4 a.m. McDonald's on the weekend. A bit. 

Organism, Yellow, White, Natural material, World, Grey, Design, Peach, Chemical substance, Silver, pinterest

To make the nugget, seasoning, batter, bread crumbs, and fry the chicken nuggets, McDonalds uses:

  1. White boneless chicken
  2. Water
  3. Food starch-modified
  4. Salt
  5. Autolyzed yeast
  6. Salt
  7. Wheat starch
  8. Natural flavour (botanical source)
  9. Safflower oil
  10. Dextrose
  11. Citric acid
  12. Sodium phosphates
  13. Natural flavour (botanical source)
  14. Water
  15. Bleached wheat flour
  16. Niacin
  17. Reduced iron
  18. Thiamine mononitrate
  19. Riboflavin
  20. Folic acid
  21. Yellow corn flour
  22. Bleached wheat flour
  23. Food starch-modified
  24. Salt
  25. Baking soda
  26. Sodium acid pyrophosphate
  27. Sodium aluminum phosphate
  28. Monocalcium phosphate
  29. Calcium lactate
  30. Spices
  31. Wheat starch
  32. Dextrose
  33. Corn starch
  34. Canola oil
  35. Corn oil
  36. Soybean oil
  37. Hydrogenated soybean oil
  38. with TBHQ
  39. and Citric Acid to preserve freshness of the oil
  40. and Dimethylpolysiloxane to reduce oil splatter when cooking

Bloody hell. 

H/T: Daily Mail, Cosmo UK

From: Cosmopolitan US