I sometimes forget why I am shunning certain products. This is a new category to keep track of food rants so I remember.

The rule is that if I have a problem with a food source even once, I will never buy it again. Likewise, a single incidence of food poisoning at a restaurant is enough to never return. It doesn't matter if they 'fix' things; if their process allows customers to get poisoned, they can never be trusted again.

Tyson Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts

I do not like store bought chicken at all and that is why I raise my own chickens. But I have problems getting cooperation regarding killing, plucking and dressing the chickens. As a result, most of the chickens I have raised for meat end up living so long they get eaten by dogs, possums, and chicken hawks, discouraging. Somehow store bought factory chicken product appears in the freezer. Organic free range is considered less valuable than the corporate product by society.

This is a 2.5 lb sack of processed white chicken meat. Mostly it is water. The bag indicates that the chickens are 'fifteen percent' injection filled with a 'broth', that consists of salt and 'natural flavorings'. (What is that? Beef and pork juice? Turpentine extract?), and then 'water glazed' before being 'flash frozen'. So the meat is not only injected 15% full of water, but it is covered in ice, which is in addition to the 15%. So defrosting it you lose a substantial amount of the supposed 2.5 lbs. Now that's just a rip off really, and what is with adding flavors to chicken? Is that to mask the flavor of rotten meat, or meat so filled with antibiotics that it is bitter? Probably.

Frying this frozen stuff you find a pan that is actually filled with water with chicken floating around in it. That's how much water was added to it before freezing! The problem is that in addition to this, there is this very foamy stuff foaming all over the place and making foamy noises. Where is this foam coming from? From inside the chicken, the chicken is exuding some chemical that is creating foam. So we finished cooking this batch and gave it to the dog. I hope he doesn't die from eating this Tyson 'chicken', which is obviously unfit for human consumption.

Food Club Extra Long Grain Enriched Rice

Then we made rice. This is a 2 lb bag of Food Club (generic brand of Food City) Extra Long Grain Enriched Rice, distributed by Topco and a "Product of USA". Just plain rice, but with the usual vitamins added: Ferric Phosphate (Iron), Niacin (B-2), Thiamine Mononitrate (B-1), Folic Acid (B-9). The rice had a very noticeable chemical flavor that I would compare to the base of some cheap perfume. It left a weird pasty feeling on the top of my mouth. Shortly after eating a few spoons of it my stomach was hurting and the rest of the family is now complaining of stomach aches.

Now I think the USA sourced rice is fine here, what I worry about is the "vitamins", which are undoubtedly sourced from China. I used to work in the vitamin importing business and by far the cheapest chemicals are for China and for good reason. The drums you get are filthy and the chemicals will be filled with dirt, mouse droppings and not be the right color. Assaying the chemicals almost always would should that the chemical was not the right amount specified. Sometimes you'd have to send the chemical out to be reprocessed. Sometimes it would be the wrong chemical. Lately, chinese chemicals have been in the news, where chinese companies will substitute rat poison or antifreeze for things like additives to baby food or animal feed. This is very common and is the way the chinese do things. Most American import companies do not re-assay the chemicals though, and so the "vitamins" you are taking to improve your health are often actually poison or worse.

Our national food supply is not safe. Not safe at all. This is a systematic problem and as such, is a far greater threat to our lives than so-called terrorists taking pot shots at buildings and dams.