Subway’s Deceitful Chicken Outed

Subway Canada’s chicken, raised without antibiotics, also found to contain only 53% chicken DNA. The rest is soy DNA. Our family will not be eating there again.

Loved their cold cut subs, I do, but this is not the first but the second time that I have seen deceit from Subway. It is time for our family to no longer eat at this fast food chain. This time the CBC researched various fast food chains for their chicken sandwiches. Even accounting for additives such as spices, most chicken came out at 88% chicken DNA. Subway’s oven roasted chicken came out at 53% and their chicken fingers came out at 43%. The remaining DNA was soy. Soy. Really? That is just fraudulent.

In 2014 Subway found to have added a harmful chemical additive to their bread. Ok, one slip up.

A recent CBC Marketplace investigation into something as benign as the chicken in your chicken sandwich shed some startling results. Youtube video One would expect that the chicken would have near 100% chicken DNA. Accounting for additives such as spices, most restaurant do, as expected.

• A&W Chicken Grill Deluxe averaged 89.4 per cent chicken DNA
• McDonald’s Country Chicken – Grilled averaged 84.9 per cent chicken DNA
• Tim Hortons Chipotle Chicken Grilled Wrap averaged 86.5 per cent chicken DNA
• Wendy’s Grilled Chicken Sandwich averaged 88.5 per cent chicken DNA

…Subway’s results were such an outlier that the team decided to test them again, biopsying five new oven roasted chicken pieces, and five new orders of chicken strips.

Those results were averaged: the oven roasted chicken scored 53.6 per cent chicken DNA, and the chicken strips were found to have just 42.8 per cent chicken DNA. The majority of the remaining DNA? Soy.

This is shocking. Chicken is the least expensive of meats, and you doctor it with soy? Not disclosing this to the public is fraudulent and negligent. What if someone is allergic to soy? I would expect that a piece of chicken would be made up of at least 90% chicken DNA and a negligible amount of additives. I bought chicken legs yesterday at the local Chinese store for $0.77CAD/lb. Real chicken is not expensive and should but be adulterated in the name of profit.

Enough, Subway. My family’s health is to important to me to risk dining at your fast food chain.

Addendum 2017 Mar 02: Of course Subway disputes the CBC claim and evidence that their “chicken” is only 50% or less actual chicken DNA, so CBC released their scientific report. While not perfectly exact, the results look good to one standard deviation, and convincing enough for me. Take a look at the results, which show a market drop in chicken DNA of over 25% and a marked increase in plant DNA. This is a significant variation as compared to their competitors. Same lab, different resteraunts, same testing technique should result in a standard and fair test.

Kudos to CBC Marketplace for a solid scientific analysis of chicken from fast food places, and when called out they disclosed their proof. Bad for Subway for not believing a DNA analysis from a third party independent lab. What kind of chicken is Subway using that would fool a DNA test?

CBC Marketplace chicken DNA report