Where's the Chicken?

So, the other day I was shopping at the local Dollar General in town here. I decided to pick up a can of Chicken and Dumplings because I wanted something quick and easy for dinner. I figured it was a big enough can, 16 ounces, of food to eat for dinner and share a little with Alley and Rambo.

Now the picture on the front of the can shows a nice blue soup bowl filled up with the Chicken and Dumplings, and there is a fork being held over it with one cute little dumpling on it; along with this nice big chunk of chicken sitting on top of the dumpling. Later that night I opened up the can and poured the contents into a saucepan to cook it up. Mind you that the can almost gave my poor old electric can opener a heart attack while trying to open it at all. Anyhow, after I put the dinner into the saucepan, I looked at it, confused. I scratched the back of my neck. I looked at the saucepan again, still puzzled. The label on the can did say Chicken and Dumplings right? So where's the bleepin' chicken??? Did I get a can with no chicken in it? I grab up a fork and start to stir the contents of the saucepan, in search of the missing meat. I find liquid and dumplings, and more liquid and more dumplings; wait a minute, what's with these slivers of pasty looking brown stringy things. Oh I'm sorry, I just found the chicken! Oh my God, talk about misrepresentation on the front of the can. Well, needless to say I had to do some 'fixing up' of my dinner to even make it look worth eating. I just have this thing about an entire meal where the food is all the same color - blah. And yes, blah is a food coloring I believe; at least in mass production food anyway. So, I'm searching thru my fridge and cabinets looking around for additions to my square fat dumplings and stringy slivers of chicken in blah colored liquid. I toss in a half can of leftover tuna from the day before, some Cumin and Garlic Pepper for spice, and some 'Mexicorn'. Yes, I said 'Mexicorn'; it's from Green Giant Brand and it's probably worth a blog entry on another day. It's just spicy corn with red and green pepper in it. Anyhow I managed to save dinner; even though I spent about 15 minutes preparing what was supposed to be a 2 minute dinner.

After all this, I decide to look up the ingredients on the back of the can. Why I keep doing these kinds of things, knowing how big of a mistake it probably is, I will never know for sure I guess. So now here comes the fun. By the way, reading the ingredients on a can of food is like having to read a complex math problem with all the parentheses and stuff inside other stuff. And yes, the chicken was listed, way down at the bottom of the list. So I'm guessing it makes up about 1% of the contents of the can; which means the big chunk of chicken on the label is probably the entire meat portion before it was cut up into oblivion.

INGREDIENTS OF CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS FROM A CAN:

1) SAUCE: water (duh), modified food starch, salt, sauce base (chicken broth, modified food starch (again) ), flavoring (soluble pepper (what?), soluble celery(again, what?), and annatto (color)(thank you for telling me annatto is a color)

2) DUMPLINGS : wheat flour (enriched durum flour)(and probably the healthiest part of the meal in the whole damn can), ferrous sulfate, niacin thiamine, mononitrate riboflavin, folic acid, water, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, salt (can't get enough salt into the can I see), baking soda, corn starch, sodium aluminum sulfate (salty metal too!), monocalcium phosphate, spices and natural flavors (after all that you need more than a touch of natural flavors people)

3) COOKED CHICKEN MEAT: chicken meat (yes they have to tell you there is chicken meat in the cooked chicken meat!), salt (in case there isn't enough in the rest of the stuff in the can), water, modified food starch (once again), and sodium phosphate (more salted metal).

I want to re-label this stuff to read as follows:

Sauce and Dumplings

With other added chemicals and flavorings

(Includes Chicken Meat Slivers)

And we need to put a warning at the bottom

WARNING: This product is not intended for nutrition purposes and can be hazardous to those persons who actually seek out nutritional food items.