A Final Thought: Let's Talk Chicken

For Halloween this year, I dressed as Harland David Sanders. You may know him better as Colonel Sanders. I planned ahead and spent six weeks growing a gray Van Dyke-style goatee. I don’t like to admit it, but I was very convincing—gray hair, white suit, black string bow tie, browline glasses, black pocket square, and a cane. I even carried a KFC chicken bucket in case anyone didn’t recognize the Colonel.

I was so convincing that trick-or-treaters and their parents took selfies with me, and several kids thought I really was the Colonel, or at least the “new” Colonel, the guy in today’s TV commercials who’s thinner and more spry than old Harland.

Many of the trick-or-treaters got excited when they saw my red-and-white chicken bucket, only to be disappointed when I showed them it was empty. I asked my wife if we could pass out fried chicken instead of candy next year.

She said no. She did not want to accept the liability of giving away unpackaged food, and she didn’t want parents to think we were trying to poison their children.

I think about chicken a lot. For years, I’ve insisted that when future archaeologists discover the ruins of our civilization, they’ll say one thing: “Man, these people ate a lot of chicken.”

Wherever you find humans, you find chickens, and for good reason. In the U.S. alone, we eat 22 to 24 million chickens each day, more than 8 billion per year.

My wife’s grandfather raised chickens in Honoraville, Alabama. Not just a few hens pecking around the barnyard. He had two chicken houses, each holding 6,000 chickens. Every nine weeks, the processor delivered 12,000 baby chicks and picked up the grown chickens for processing.

You did not want to be downwind from the chicken houses, especially on a hot July day. The smell was, well, I hope you’re not eating cereal while reading this. If you want to know what a chicken house smells like, open a bag of Holly-tone plant food and stick your nose in it. It’s similar because two of Holly-tone’s main ingredients are hydrolyzed feather meal and pasteurized poultry manure.

Pasteurized?

Many people don’t want to think about their delicious poultry coming from a critter. That’s why we have boneless chicken nuggets, boneless breasts, and boneless wings, which aren’t really wings. They’re usually made from breast meat. There was even a famous lawsuit over the phrase “boneless wings.” 

In Halim v. Buffalo Wild Wings, Halim argued that labeling the item “boneless wings” constituted deceptive marketing and consumer fraud. He claimed he was misled into paying premium prices for what are essentially “glorified chicken nuggets” made from breast meat.

However, U.S. District Judge John Tharp, Jr. dismissed the suit, famously saying the case had “no meat on its bones.” The judge ruled that “boneless wings” is a “fanciful name” and a common culinary term used for more than two decades.

That makes sense to me. After all, no one expects “chicken fingers” to actually be chicken fingers. That said, my grown children and grandchildren are now mostly a mix of vegans, vegetarians, and pescatarians, so the chicken fingers in my freezer are made from soybeans.

With all due respect to Harland Sanders, the best fried chicken was made by my Aunt Judy in Phenix City, Alabama. The second-best was made by her brother, who, happily for me, was my father. I can still see Dad standing over the stove, a kitchen towel draped over his shoulder, gently turning chicken in an inch of hot Crisco in a cast-iron skillet. He never deep-fried chicken. That was one of his secrets.

Speaking of secrets, KFC’s famous 11 herbs and spices are no longer a secret. Harland Sanders’ nephew, Joe Ledington, leaked them during a 2016 interview with the Chicago Tribune. (If you’d rather keep the magic alive, stop reading now and look away): salt, thyme, basil, oregano, celery salt, black pepper, dried mustard, paprika, garlic salt, ground ginger and white pepper. 

Finally, when KFC first opened in China, the slogan “it’s finger lickin’ good” was translated as “eat your fingers off.” The company quickly corrected it.

Something similar happened when the California Milk Processor Board introduced its “Got Milk” campaign to the state’s many Hispanic residents. Some people read the slogan “¿Tienes leche?” as “Are you lactating?”

Hmm, that might be another reason to heed the advice of the Chick-fil-A cows and “Eat Mor Chikin.”

Mitch@MimiVanderhaven.com