It's been about a year since McDonald's swore off the use of chicken raised with antibiotics, and less time since they vowed to make simplicity the name of their fast food game, but now the chain is taking a few more steps towards making our favorite menu item -- nuggets, duh -- something that we can be proud to call our guilty pleasure.
In an effort to swap out the 40-ingredient McNugget recipe for something a little "healthier" (healthy is a stretch, but go with it for a second), McDonald's is testing a "cleaner" version of the happy meal staple. This includes using frying oil that doesn't contain the the (almost, if not totally, impossible to pronounce) preservative tert-Butylhydroquinone, and cutting ingredients like sodium phosphates from the McNugget secret formula. (We should note that McDonald's has been pretty adamant about the importance of sodium phosphates in keeping their nuggets moist, so we're not entirely sure what kind of trade-off we're talking about here.)
Save these random tidbits of information, though, the whole McNugget transformation has been pretty hush hush, and there hasn't really been an official announcement from McDonald's about when the upgraded nuggets will can be expected nationwide.
Becca Hary, a spokeswoman for the chain, stressed to Crain's Chicago Business that the recipe tweaks are still very much in their testing phase, and the chain is still not at the point where it's ready to confirm a launch date. Hary did, however, confirm that responses have been positive in the 140-restaurant test market where the recipe has been tried out. "More than ever," she said, "customers care about where their food comes from and how it is prepared."
While we eagerly wait for the new and improved chicken nuggets to be rolled out across the country, at least we have the brand new McDonald's chicken breakfast sandwich to keep us company. It's not a McNugget, but it might be able to hold us over.
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