What do people see in white meat?

One of the enduring mysteries through decades of eating out is the affection restaurants show for white meat -- specifically, the chicken breast. It's often bland, dried out and little more than filler, but you just can't escape it. What happens to all those bone-in pieces -- glorious drum sticks, delectable thighs and doubly good leg quarters -- oozing juices and flavor?

The chicken breast is not only served just about everywhere, but it is almost always raised with antibiotics, so you rarely get moist breast meat. It's hard to overcook dark meat and the taste is well worth it, despite the extra fat and cholesterol. Last night, we made jerk chicken drum sticks that were terrific right down to the bone.

In an Italian restaurant, the breast meat is pounded thin and flavored with lemon, cheese and tomato sauce, and other preparations that preserve some flavor. But in too many restaurants, dry chicken breast is added to salads, the easiest way to ruin a healthy meal. Even marinating a chicken, such as the one served in Pollos El Chevere, the great Peruvian restaurant in Passaic, can't prevent the awful taste of dried-out breast meat.

Yesterday, I met a friend for a lunch of soup and salad bar at the Coach House in Hackensack. He chose a hearty bean soup, but I made the mistake of ordering chicken "gumbo." Not only was it nothing like gumbo, it was filled with tasteless chunks of overcooked breast meat.

Boneless thigh meat is juicy and feels great in your mouth, but you'll be hard put to find it on a menu. I only know of one place, BBQ Chicken & Beer, a Korean fried-chicken restaurant in Cliffside Park, that serves broiled boneless thighs. Last week, we cooked up boneless and skinless thighs at home, coated in chili spices, and my wife raved. If we roast a whole chicken, or prepare it on a rotisserie, we ensure moist breast meat for sandwiches by buying drug-free or organic birds.

Of course, you'll find lots of greasy drum sticks and thighs at American fried chicken restaurants, but it's usually a  cheap brand, such as the Tyson poultry used by KFC.

I suspect many restaurants have skinless and boneless breast meat delivered in sanitary packages for not much money by food distributors. Sysco offers restaurants chicken breast portions that only have to be warmed in a convection oven, such as one done Kiev-style. No muss, no fuss. They're ready to go, cook up fast and are profitable -- great for the restaurant but not for the customer.

More on industrial farms' use of antibiotics

Check out the following link to The Pew Charitable Trusts' Web site on the use of antibiotics in industrial farm animals:

http://www.saveantibiotics.org/

One point it makes is that "70 percent of U.S. antibiotics go to animals raised on industrial farms that aren't sick, to offset crowding and poor sanitation. This practice promotes the development of deadly strains of drug-resistant bacteria that can spread to humans."

Something to keep in mind the next time you are shopping for chicken, pork or any other meat in your favorite supermarket and are drawn by the low prices on products from Perdue and Tyson, and meat producers you can't identify because of a store-labeled package.

Eat at home after you see this movie

"Food Inc.," a new documentary in limited release, sounds like a real stomach-turner, a "horrifying dissection of the U.S. food industry, where corporate-owned, massed-produced and chemically enhanced edibles can be unhealthy at best and deadly at worst," according to The Associated Press review.

Here's only one of the sickening images mentioned in the review: Chickens "so puffed up with antibiotics, they collapse under the weight of their breasts and die before they can be slaughtered." Food industry behemoths like Tyson and Perdue, which feed their chickens antibiotics, wouldn't speak for the film.

The film review appears today in the entertainment section of the local daily newspaper, a half-dozen pages or so from coverage of restaurant openings and closings, reviews and health inspections. I wonder how many readers will notice that those reports rarely discuss the origin and quality of the food, including the use of antibiotics, growth hormones and other additives in meat and poultry.

Does the good stuff go on sale?

The free-range, grass-fed Australian beef I bought the other day for $2.99 a pound at ShopRite is the rare instance where meat or poultry that is raised naturally sells for less than the ordinary stuff (see earlier post, "Fire sale on free-range beef") .

You always see Perdue or Tyson chicken on sale, but except for an occasional, in-store "manager's special," you won't see lower prices for drug-free Readington Farms poultry. Whole Foods puts its drug- and hormone-free steaks on sale for $9.99 a pound (this week, it's rib eye), compared to $12.99 normally. But Fairway's sale price for ordinary rib eye is about half that.

ShopRite does cut prices for free-range Australian beef and lamb, so those producers may feel that's the only way they can get and keep a foothold in the U.S. But most people seem to judge poultry on price alone. Deceptive TV advertising doesn't help. The chicken listed in the local daily newspaper's Marketbasket survey is Perdue. In fact, the newspaper's survey completely omits organic and antibiotic-free foods.