Could it be that Subway isn’t serving everything it promises?
The restaurant chain, which touts an “Eat Fresh” slogan, was the subject of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Marketplace investigation, which did DNA tests on Subway’s sandwiches, as well as the food at a handful of other fast-food places. The results were perhaps surprising:
According to CBC, Subway’s “oven roasted chicken scored 53.6 percent chicken DNA, and the chicken strips were found to have just 42.8 percent chicken DNA.”
So if roughly half of the “chicken” sandwiches weren’t actually chicken, what were they made of? Turns out, they were largely soy.
CBC explains that “an unadulterated piece of chicken from the store should come in at 100 percent chicken DNA. Seasoning, marinating or processing meat would bring that number down, so fast food samples seasoned for taste wouldn’t be expected to hit that 100 percent target.” But only half? That’s raising some red flags.
Subway didn’t sit idly by in the wake of the results. The company issued a statement challenging the findings. Subway argues that its chicken sandwiches contain less than 1 percent soy. However, the CBC researchers did two rounds of testing on the chicken because the initial results were such outliers. (The second round confirmed what was found the first time.)
For those who love Subway’s food, this news will admittedly be a bit hard to swallow.
This isn’t the first time Subway has raised some eyebrows. Because of past claims about antibiotics and the subsequent waffling, Subway was one of the food companies listed last week on Farm Babe’s “8 anti-science food companies that don’t deserve our money.”
