Oprah Serves Up Free Hypocrisy (with Two Sides and a Biscuit)

by Jill Richardson · 2009-05-06 22:00:00 UTC
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OprahOprah Winfrey is giving away free chicken at KFC. You can download a coupon from her website and voila! Free chicken. You get two pieces of grilled chicken, two sides, and a biscuit. This seems to be part of a rebranding effort by KFC to get consumers to think of them as the go-to place for "healthy" grilled chicken instead of the deep-fried stuff. The blog Fooducate took a look at the nutritional differences between the grilled and fried chicken.

We crunched the numbers for you to see if the grilled chicken is substantially healthier. Comparing a fried breast to a grilled breast here is the lowdown:

Serving size: fried - 6 oz.  grilled - just 4.25 oz.   So even before preparation, we’re talking about a smaller portion.

Calories: 370 for fried, just half of that for grilled.

total fat: fried - 21 grams (35% of your daily value) vs just 4 grams for grilled.

Sodium: 1050 gr (almost half your daily maximum!) for fried, vs. 440 for grilled.

Keep in mind, these values are just for one piece. The coupon gives you 2 chicken pieces, plus 2 sides (average 150 calories a side), plus a biscuit that clocks in at 180 calories. Total calories for the grilled deal - 840, and that’s before soft drinks.

In other words - it's probably still not the healthiest thing you could put in your mouth. And that's before you even get into the social and environmental implications of such a meal. For example, KFC gets its chicken from Tyson. It's up to you if you want to see what goes on in their slaughterhouses. (For more info, check out TorturebyTyson or Cyberactivist.) The problem isn't limited to inhumane treatment of chickens, though. A year ago, I interviewed a man who worked in a Tyson plant who was treated extremely badly.

Why is this hypocrisy? Because Oprah made headlines last year when she did a show exposing the cruel ways animals are treated in factory farms. Her show came right before the 2008 election, when California was set to pass a ballot initiative banning several of the cruelest livestock practices. The measure passed overwhelmingly, perhaps due to Oprah's help. Why is she teaming up with KFC now???

Photo credit: wrestlingentropy on Flickr.com

Jill Richardson
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