How Did Mcdonalds Use Chicken Nuggets In American Society

Chicken McNuggets and American Society
The Chicken McNugget has been a popular product in American fast food chain for years. However, the product has not been around for quite that long. The first Chicken McNuggets marketed and sold at McDonald’s fast food chains occurred in 1983. Thirty-three years later, McDonalds still abundantly sells Chicken McNuggets to a variety of audiences.
Of those two audiences, children and adults are easily targeted by McDonalds and its advertisements. With this being said, tons of chicken McNuggets are sold by McDonalds to both the youth and the adults as a quick and easy meal or a snack on the go. However, many customers are unaware of how chicken nuggets are made and the health concerns that surround the product.
Thanks to recent outcries over the health benefits of the product, McDonald’s has taken different approaches; ultimately this means that not only has the recipe changed but also the advertisement and approach to audiences across the United States of America and the entire world.
Throughout this essay we will go more in depth with the chicken McNugget on how it was made and advertised, the recent changes McDonald’s has made to fit the concerns of parents and adults and how that changed the advertising approach as Mcdonald’s battled to keep their product in popular demand. Along with research a survey will be provided to convey the popularity of the chicken nugget amongst a couple of peers.
The Chicken McNugget first hit the fast food chain in 1983 after McDonald’s popularity plummeted due to health assertions made by the American society. America, since the 1950’s entered an era that would be marked by a new health epidemic: obesity. At the forefront of the fast food chains was McDonald’s due to its popularity for quick and easy meals. Emelyn Rude, journalist for Time Magazine, shines a limelight on this struggling period for McDonald’s when she writes, “Ever more people were
listening to these nutritional messages, and sales for McDonald’s fell off dramatically”(1). The restaurant chain had made its impressive mark on four continents with over 6,000 joints open to the public. However, this quickly turned sour when those health concerns were becoming more and more prevalent in American society. McDonald’s needed an idea that would once again bring them the fame that they had amounted to previously. It would find itself taking another chance with chicken products, an attempt that had not proven effective before. Out of nowhere the chicken nugget came to be and was sold with the help of many companies that McDonald’s had befriended over their popular period. Rude highlights the immense popularity the chicken McNugget brought to McDonald’s when she writes, “In less than half a year, McDonald’s tacked together a new multi-million dollar factory dedicated to just these nuggets, and called in the big guns at Tyson Foods to help them ensure a steady supply” (1). Health concerns were arising over things such as saturated fats and cholesterol all while heart disease climbed up the charts on America’s top deadly diseases. People looked to chicken as a source of healthier meats and McDonald’s had recently took a chance with chicken nuggets. The timing was perfect and sales skyrocketed around the vicinities that McDonald’s were built at. Advertisement proved to be an excellent catalyst between the consumers and the product.
Advertisement is essential to any good product and its outcome in terms of sales.
Chicken nuggets advertisement has certainly seen many forms, some more extreme than others. In one recent advertisement by Leo Burnett, we are introduced to a stack of chicken McNuggets over an internet search bar that has the letter “c” typed in and showing two results: the first being “chicken McNuggets” and the second being “Christmas” (1). To better understand this advertisement we must understand how the internet search engine bar works. Typically the word/object most popular and most searched for shows up first in the list, the following words/objects being the lesser popular. So in this advertisement McDonald’s is implying that the popularity of its chicken McNuggets has managed to surpass the popularity of Christmas. Bold statements like these can only be supported by bold numbers in sells of one single product and that is definitely true for the nuggets. This is an excellent example of how far a company goes to advertise even if it means making statements against popular culture. Christmas is cherished dearly in the United States. Yet most see this as a minor joke and continue to buy chicken
McNuggets.
McDonald’s goes as far as sponsoring the Olympic Games. It wasn’t until 1973 that McDonald’s began sponsoring the games, according to Jamie Oliver, a health expert (1). With a world-wide audience it is hard not to notice the catchy jingle of McDonald’s commercials. Although questions arise over the irony of a fast food joint supporting a world sports organization, McDonald’s remains on the labels and commercials in domination. It is astounding to see a product get so popular but even that doesn’t mean that criticism isn’t around the corner.
As we discussed earlier, McDonald’s, in the midst of a sales decline, took another shot with selling chicken product the Americans people and countries around the world. Why were McDonald’s products not in popular demand you may ask? Well this is because of the emerging knowledge of health risks in regards to processed foods. McDonald’s based its entire popularity off of processed food with magnificent taste. American society and those people from around the world were beginning to get the message about nutritional health issues. Beef was publicly denounced by the government as we can see in Rude’s article, “As a result, the government explicitly and loudly called for the people to ‘decrease consumption of meat and increase consumption of poultry and fish’” (1). The government played a tremendous role in the decline of McDonald’s beef products (pretty much their whole menu). What seemed like a closed door was actually another open door full of opportunities. The government may have denounced the exorbitant amount of beef consumption but they also encouraged more consumption of white meats like poultry. For McDonald’s to make an entrance into the poultry game was genius. What had failed before was now going to skyrocket the company into success. Chicken McNuggets were a huge success but a turning point came into play when health experts and customers alike questioned the nutritional value of the nuggets.
Of course we are all aware of how bad fast food is in today’s world. We also are no strangers when it comes to questioning of integrity of fast food products and their authenticity. Chicken nuggets seem easy enough to make, right? Simply using chicken is easy enough to make a nugget for the consumers. However, this was not the case. Many studies have been conducted on the bit size chicken nuggets sold at McDonald’s. The once “healthier” alternative to the menu was now under siege by health experts and those trying to figure the secrets behind the making of the beloved chicken McNugget. Hamblin better explains this discovery when he interviews pathologists Bigler and DeShazo and states their scientific studies, “The nugget from the first restaurant (breading not included) was approximately 50 percent muscle. The other half was primarily fat, with some blood vessels and nerve, as well as ‘generous quantities of epithelium [from skin and visceral organs] and associated supportive tissue’. That broke down overall to 56 percent fat, 25 percent carbohydrates and 19 percent protein” (1). The dissection performed by DeShazo and Bigler was just one of the many studies performed on the beloved nuggets. The numbers are not impressive especially for those that focus on eating healthy for a living. Once again McDonald’s was dealing with another health blow to their menu to a certain degree depending on the audience targeted by the nuggets.
For a grown adult it is easy to decipher what is bad and what is good in terms of nutrition. If he/she enjoys processed foods then he/she can have at it. On the other spectrum are the children who received the nuggets in their happy meals. To a little kid a chicken nugget is made of real chicken from a chicken farm, no questions asked. This is problem not only concerned adults with their overall health but also with the health of their children. Let’s face it, no one wants to feed their kids unhealthy meals that can lead to chronic diseases.
What was a bit more shocking was the denial of organizations/companies under the wing of McDonald’s in regards to the nutritional outcries. Hamblin effectively quotes The National Chicken Council in regards to Bigler and DeShazo’s claims