Is the very definition of the word “wing” changing? Many wing restaurants offer a “cauliflower wing” as an alternative, whose only relationship to the real wing is the sauce. Additionally, some vegan “wing” recipes suggest inserting a popsicle stick to resemble a chicken bone.
By Ted Anthony
NEW YORK (AP) — One day in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, a serious-looking man with long hair the color of Buffalo sauce spoke during the Lincoln City Council’s public comment session. , Nebraska. the unusual issue of his speech was: the time has come to put an end to the lie.
“I move that our city withdraw the term ‘boneless wings’ from our menus and our hearts,” said Ander Christensen, who managed to be persuasive and ironic at the same time. “We have lived a lie for too much time”.
behold the joyful lie that has been perpetrated (with his blessing) on the citizens chicken consumers in the menus of USA: a “boneless wing” that not a wing at all. And that’s just what Americans are preparing to consume over the weekend of the super bowl: 1.450 million pieces.
Many of you probably already knew this, although an informal survey of wing restaurants over the past year indicates that a fair number of Americans don’t, but such flavorful little pieces of white meat give you a glimpse of how things are marketed. , how people believe it… Additionally, if anyone cares, apart from the chicken.
According to the National Chicken Council business chamber, Americans are preparing to consume 1.45 billion wings during the game. So if you’ve ever wanted an in-depth look at what it means to eat wings that aren’t—and how the wing’s proximity to beer, good times, and football lifted it to the skies—there’s no better time than now. .
Today’s food landscape is littered with these impostors: We eat food masquerading as other things.
Surimi is a fish that becomes “crab” or “lobster” meat for many of us and fills California sushi across the country. The so-called Impossible Burgers (Impossible Hamburgers) are vegetable delicacies with many meat characteristics that have nothing animal in their composition. Additionally, the “Chilean sea bass” is neither sea bass nor is it Chilean, but Patagonian toothfish.
The rise of the “boneless wing” is partly due to money. In recent years, as the price of chicken wings has risen, the alternative has become cheaper. The average price per pound for “boneless wings” is $4.99, compared to $8.38 for bone-in wings, according to Tom Super, senior vice president for communications for the National Chicken Council, citing the Department of Agriculture. He said it is “a way to sell more boneless, skinless brisket of which there is an abundant supply.”
“While many consumers argue that the wing needs a bone in to give it a special flavor, the success of boneless wings demonstrates that there are wing eaters in abundance,” Super wrote in an email.
Because? Partly because the “boneless wings”—the quotation marks will stick around for the rest of our dialogue—evoke a powerful context.
“You associate it with the Super Bowl and parties and having fun, and in that way you transform the perception of the product,” explains Christopher Kimball, founder of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, a company whose magazine and TV show educate people about the food and how to cook it
“Most people have no idea where this is coming from,” adds Kimball. “Put the blame on the food companies if you want, but we accept it.”
We accept it… even with all our hearts. Additionally, deep down, what does it matter?, you will say. They’re delicious, they’re convenient. So why bother with something that pairs perfectly with beer and makes sports entertainment a better place?
Here’s a possible reason: could they be a microcosm of the complacency with which we accept things that are not what they say they are? And isn’t this one of the things this country grapples with, especially in the misinformation-saturated years since the “boned wing” first appeared in our world?
“There’s really nothing wrong with that, but are we fooling people?” wonders Matthew Read, a professor of advertising at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, who has worked for two decades in ad agencies. He hosts a local TV cooking show called “Spatchcock Funk.”
“The wing,” he said, “has gone from being part of the chicken to something you can dip in sauce and eat with your hand.”
Taken or not from those flight-related appendages, “boneless wings” have taken over the tables. The Chicken Council, which attributes its invention to the giant Buffalo Wild Wings chain, asked wing eaters in 2018 what their favorites were, and 40 percent declared themselves fans of “Team Boneless.” In previous years the proportion was even higher.
Christensen, a chemical engineer by trade, began his crusade against the wing years ago, when he was in college and his group of friends had all just broken up with their girlfriends. The result was that they had more money and time and started going to wing restaurants three times a week. He observed how many “boneless wings” were consumed without knowing that they were not what they claimed to be. Thus a comic cause was born, but only halfway.
“I look around and wonder, ‘why doesn’t anyone care?’” he said in an interview this week.
He said he has conducted informal surveys asking people about their wing habits, including one during a college football game in Ohio. “The vast majority of people have no idea. Most believe it is part of the wing. Some believe it is part of the thigh. Only a few realized that it was from the chicken breast.
His theory is that generations who grew up on chicken nuggets have turned to “boneless wings” to allow themselves to maintain those eating habits. “So they can pretend to eat like adults,” he added.
“Our idea of what a wing is comes from what we are told to eat,” explains Alexandra Plakias, a professor at Hamilton College in New York and author of Thinking Through Food: A Philosophical Introduction (Thinking Through Food: A Philosophical Introduction).
“These kinds of little lies that seem funny normalize manipulation,” adds Plakias. Is a wing part of a bird or is a wing a type of sauce? That ambiguity, I believe, opens the space for the lie”.
And so, perhaps, the language evolves, although some skeptics remain.
“Personally, I think it does matter. I want to know exactly what dish I’m ordering and what’s in my food,” says Natalie Visconti, 20, a sophomore at Penn State University who says she loves the “traditional wing.”
Christensen promises to keep going, saying, almost in passing, that he aspires to be “the world’s first dedicated chicken wing lobbyist.” Some treat it with disdain. People of all stripes accuse him of transmitting a coded political message. He insists that it is nothing more than the search for culinary truth.
“Really, I only care about boneless wings,” he said. “I have only one little cause to die for, but it’s my own.”