MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Few things in life are certain, but for decades in American supermarkets, one thing was -chicken thighs were cheaper than chicken breasts. That seems to be changing. It's something Sarah Zhang noticed on a recent trip to the grocery store. She is a science writer at The Atlantic, so she decided to look into it. And what she found is that America's era of white meat as king might be coming to an end. Sarah Zhang, welcome.
SARAH ZHANG: Thanks for having me.
KELLY: Talk to me about that era. When did this actually begin, America's obsession with breast meat?
ZHANG: Yeah, well, if you think about going back decades - right? - eating a chicken basically meant eating a whole chicken because there was no way for you to get something like six chicken breasts on the dinner table. By the 1980s, the first sort of deboned chicken breast plant opened, and this really kicked off the white meat era. And you might remember, you know, this was also a time when people were really worried about high fat and high cholesterol. So white meat kind of became the healthy option. And, you know, chicken McNuggets were all white meat. And if you wanted to get a dinner, you would get, like, a grilled chicken breast. And so for a long time, like, the rise of white meat really drove the expansion of the chicken industry. It's how chicken got so popular, period.
KELLY: And how specifically American a trend was this? - because I know a lot of cultures all over the world prefer dark meat. I know a lot of chefs here in the U.S. will tell you that dark meat tastes better.
ZHANG: Yeah, exactly. So for a long time, basically, American chicken producers, they are producing white meat for the U.S. and then exporting the dark meat to other countries. So especially people in industry used to talk about making their money on the front half of the chicken and losing money on the back half. And then, something happened, which was that we started to not just sell, like, bone-in skin-on chicken thighs, but actually selling boneless, skinless chicken thighs, which are a lot more similar to the breast meat that, you know, we're kind of used to.
KELLY: And when did that change come about?
ZHANG: So I was sort of surprised about this 'cause I didn't really grow up eating boneless skinless chicken thighs, and that's because they didn't really exist.
KELLY: Right.
ZHANG: They were only widely available about 20 years ago.
KELLY: Right.
ZHANG: And part of this is actually a technology story. So, you know, I've deboned a chicken thigh before, and I find it really annoying. But actually, when you automate the process - and the process has become, like, increasingly automated - machines are really, really good at it. And that's because if you think about what happens, there's really only one bone in the thigh, you know?
KELLY: Yeah.
ZHANG: It's actually a lot easier to get that bone out and to get meat off of a breast. And so this has just become more popular. You know, as you say, chefs kind of always knew that thighs were tastier. It's harder to overcook, you know? It doesn't get dry as easily, has a little bit more fat and a little bit more flavor. So it's just become a lot more popular.
KELLY: To the point that is central to your article about chicken thighs costing more, I read that, and I wondered, it feels like everything costs more - I mean, eggs, for example. Is it eggs? Is it every part of the chicken is just costing more because of bird flu and other factors?
ZHANG: Yeah, well, everything is costing more as we unfortunately have lived through in the past few years. But if you went back something like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, thighs cost almost half as much as a chicken breast. And now they either cost the same or close to the same or just, you know, a little bit more. So it's the comparative of the chicken breast and the chicken thighs has really changed.
KELLY: Are you team dark meat or team white meat?
ZHANG: I knew I was going to get this question. I feel like my nuanced answer is, it depends on what you're eating. If I'm getting fried chicken...
KELLY: Right.
ZHANG: ...I definitely want that crispy chicken thigh with the skin. If I'm putting some, you know, chicken on my salad, I want a poached chicken breast. That's what I prefer.
KELLY: Maybe we should all go back to that era you described at the very beginning of just the whole chicken, throw it in the oven and eat it all.
ZHANG: Yeah, they all have their virtues - every part.
KELLY: That is Sarah Zhang talking with us about her new story in The Atlantic, "The End Of Chicken Breast Dominance." Thank you.
ZHANG: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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