民以食爲天: 冷凍雞塊背後的真相

One day my husband arrived home from the supermarket with a product that piqued my curiosity. He couldn't find our usual brand of Bell & Evans breaded, frozen chicken tenders─I like their thick, meaty texture, which makes them seem a bit closer to the real thing─and instead got Applegate Farms Organic Chicken Strips.

一天，我丈夫從超市帶回的一件產品引起了我的好奇。他沒找到我們常吃的Bell &Evans牌冷凍裹粉雞柳──我喜歡這種雞柳厚實質密的口感，吃起來更接近真的雞肉──而是買了Applegate Farms牌有機雞柳。

I heated up the strips, which looked more like nuggets, and tasted them. The texture was airy and spongy, not very meaty. The chicken struck me as highly processed, but the box said that what I was eating was, in fact, 'minimally processed.' The listed ingredients seemed simple enough─organic chicken, water, organic rice starch, sea salt and natural flavor.

這些雞柳看上去更像雞塊，我把它們加熱後嚐了嚐，口感比較膨鬆，不那麼緊實。我覺得它們像是深加工產品，但包裝盒上卻寫着我吃到的其實是經過“最少加工”的食品。包裝上列出的配料似乎也足夠簡單──有機雞肉、水、有機大米澱粉、海鹽和天然香料。

Intrigued and confused, I added the remaining frozen nuggets to the collection of foods that I was leaving to age, as research for my book. (And, yes, I know that this was not a rigorous scientific experiment.) I prepared myself for an awful smell.

帶着好奇和不解，我把剩下的冷凍雞塊加入了我搜集的食物之列，我會把這些食物放上一段時間，作爲我新書的研究素材。（是的，我知道這並不是嚴謹的科學實驗。）我做好了迎接難聞氣味的準備。

After about two weeks, the Applegate nuggets, which I'd placed in a Ziploc bag left slightly open, had essentially liquefied, with the outlines of the individual chicken pieces no longer visible. The whole thing was soft and mushy to the touch, and the color had darkened.

我把這些Applegate雞塊用Ziploc塑料袋封起來，留了一絲縫隙。約兩週後，雞塊基本上都液化了，已經看不到單個雞塊的輪廓。這灘東西摸上去是軟軟的糊狀，顏色也變深了。

In early 2012, pink-slime beef became a poster child for distrust of industrialized food-processing, but chicken endures considerably more high-tech poking and prodding than beef. The chicken in the supermarket's frozen-food aisle is seldom the same thing you'd prepare at home. It may sometimes start off as recognizable cuts of meat and use familiar ingredients, but then machines take over.

2012年初，粉色牛肉泥成爲了工業化食品加工遭受質疑的典型，但比起牛肉，雞肉加工被認爲包含更多高科技處理。超市冷凍食品區出售的雞肉與你自己在家做的雞肉並不相同。在加工過程中，有時候最初使用的還是可辨認的雞肉切塊，用的也是常見的配料，然而接下來就由機器接手了。

More often than not, chicken is mixed under high pressure and tumbled together with flavoring, starch, sodium phosphate and soy protein. Then it is fashioned into tenders, nuggets, patties, boneless 'wings' and 'breasts.' Even in cases where the meat is advertised as 'whole muscle, ' sodium phosphate helps the meat take on water, partly for reasons of profit and partly as insurance against its becoming rubbery. The Applegate strips that dissolved after two weeks had no such additives and were billed on the box as 'all natural.'

多數情況下，雞肉會在高壓下被攪拌混合，過程中加入香料、澱粉、磷酸鈉和大豆蛋白，接着再被製成雞柳、雞塊、肉餅、無骨“雞翅”和“雞胸”。即便是那些打着“全肌肉”廣告的雞肉，磷酸鈉也會被用來促使雞肉吸入水分，這樣一方面可以增加利潤，另一方面也保證了雞肉不會變硬。兩週後分解的Applegate雞柳不含這些添加劑，所以包裝盒上寫的是“純天然”。

After this experience, I talked with Chris Ely, one of Applegate's founders. He said that the company was definitely 'not in the sponge business.' He added, 'When you bite into our nuggets, you'll notice that our meat is a little loose in the center.' More-conventional manufacturers, he said, mix their product excessively, using various additives to absorb water and bind everything together snugly, lowering the cost.

事後我和Applegate的創始人之一克里斯??伊利(Chris Ely)進行了交談。他說，他的公司肯定“不採用這種海綿式做法”。他補充道，“吃我們的雞塊時，你會注意到中央部分有點鬆散。”他說，傳統廠商會過度攪拌雞肉，並用各類添加劑吸收其中水分，把所有的東西都緊密地擠壓在一起，並壓低成本。

When I told Mr. Ely about my experiment, he said that though he had never tested his product this way (who would?), the chicken might be more prone to disassembly because it isn't bound together with additives. Another company's nuggets (this time with sodium phosphate and other additives) dissolved in the same way when I later tested them. But the Bell & Evans tenders did well with the two-week test: I got foul-smelling chicken, but it remained intact.

當我跟他談起我的實驗時，伊利說，雖然他從未如此檢驗過他的產品（誰會呢？），但他認爲，沒有添加過起緊實作用的添加劑的雞肉，可能會更容易分解。後來我檢驗了另一家公司的雞塊（他們的雞肉中有磷酸鈉及其他添加劑），結果雞肉同樣分解了。但是，Bell &Evans的雞柳在兩週的檢驗中表現很好：雞肉散發出臭味，但形狀完好無損。

I told Mr. Ely that my results suggested that his chicken was more of a maximally processed product than a 'minimally processed' one, as the box said.

我跟伊利說，我的實驗結果表明他們公司的雞肉更像是深加工產品，而非像包裝盒上所說的“微加工”。

'I can see your point, ' he said, and he eventually explained how the strips are made. A hand-deboned whole chicken, together with other listed ingredients, is coarse-ground and then fed into an extruder that forms it into identical pieces. After that comes a breading device, a fryer, cooking in an oven and freezing.

他說：“我明白你的意思”。最後他解釋了他們公司雞塊的製作過程。整雞經過手工去骨，混合包裝上列出的配料進行粗略攪拌，接着通過擠壓機做成的形狀一致的肉塊，接着機器裹粉、油炸、烤箱烹製，最後冷凍。

Making packaged frozen nuggets that resemble real chicken may not be possible without dialing back some of the industrial manipulation. Bell & Evans tenders, sold raw, are subjected to one quick frying to set the breading, instead of Applegate's complete oven cooking. There's no extruder.

要製作與真正的雞肉相似的包裝冷凍雞塊，可能不得不重新檢視食品工業化的一些操作。Bell &Evans的雞塊是生的，只經過快速油炸來完成裹粉，而不像Applegate一樣用烤箱烤熟，而且也不用擠壓機。

Mr. Ely says, 'In today's food-safety world, uncooked really scares me, ' though Bell & Evans has never had a recall of its products.

伊利說：“在如今這個食品安全備受關注的社會，生的東西讓我覺得害怕。”不過Bell &Evans從未召回過自己的產品。

The benefits of a safe food supply are undeniable, but they sometimes come with trade-offs that can be hard to grasp─especially when the word 'organic' appears on a package. Those nuggets from Applegate Farms certainly weren't the worst thing in the world, but each one was more air and less chicken than I could have known.

安全食品供應的好處毋庸置疑，但有時安全的代價又讓我們難以取捨──尤其是包裝上出現“有機”字眼的時候。Applegate Farms的那些雞塊肯定不是世界上最難吃的東西，但對我來說每一塊都鬆得不像雞肉。

Such compromises are quietly embedded into much of our processed food. Even with plenty of information on the package, it's rarely clear what we're eating.

這樣的妥協被默默地植入了我們的加工食品中。即便包裝上有大量的信息，也很難說明白我們到底吃的是什麼。