12 March 2007

This one's about chicken

Really.

I bought chicken breasts today.
I think they use steroids on these chickens. I looked and looked through the piles of chicken breasts to find the smallest packages, because frankly sometimes I want a chicken breast that's smaller than a ribeye steak and that a normal sized human (which I maintain I still am, even though the median size of humans in this country is expanding by the day) can consume in a single sitting with a side of sauteed vegetables and some rice and still feel comfortable rather than stuffed full and bloated. Call me crazy.

I bought the smallest packages I could find, but there was a catch, you see. Instead of four breasts (or at the least three breasts with tenderloins), in each package I got three breasts, two of which appeared to be from a normal chicken and one of which, the one hiding under the printed part of the label, was clearly from a steroid-injected mutant chicken, or perhaps some sort of turkey/chicken or condor/chicken hybrid. It's the size of two normal chicken breasts.

What bothers me is that I can get normal sized chicken breasts by going to organic food store, where they sell chickens that have had no steroids and been fed exclusively on non-fertilized non-insecticized grain, grass, or whatever. They're smaller, but I'd like smaller. And as I see it, they have less stuff in them--no steroids, no pesticides, no fertilizers--and I don't want to pay for that stuff in my chicken anyway. It's chicken. But if I buy the organic chicken, it costs half again as much.

So, what I actually want is less. But to get less, I have to pay more. It's very confusing.

4 comments:

Lucky Bob said...

Welcome to capitalism. If you are willing to pay more for less, then they are more than happy to charge you. I also like the giant mutant apples and fruit they sell too.

scanime said...

I am know picturing American ranchers herding flocks of giant, razor-beaked, Final Fantasy-esque birds through the Midwest to the Wal-Mart chocobo processing plant.

Watch out! They'll bite your finger off!

Ayzair said...

We'll often split two between the three of us, and still not eat it all. I've taken to buying natural chicken, which at least has no hormones, and organic when it's on sale. Of course, to get these I also cruise Harris Teeter at least once a week scoping out the bright yellow "Buy today!" stickers. That way they're at least down to the same price as the mutant chicken, though I do have to remember to speed home to get them into the freezer before they start to mutate on their own.

Thankfully, we have no Whole Foods in RH yet. I'd go absolutely berzerk and spend an entire month's food budget in one day. But I can manage to restrain myself at Teeter, most of the time. Though I heard a rumor Fresh Market was coming in, and that would be bad ...

Anonymous said...

I like going to actual meat shops because you can buy individually exactly what you want and not pay for more than you want. The people are nicer and are willing to prepare it any way you want also. Land and Sea and Oakfield Market are in the Tampa area.