Nutrition Facts for 10 piece Chicken McNuggets: Healthy or Unhealthy Snack?
What’s in Those Chicken Nuggets?
If you love to eat McDonald’s chicken nuggets, you need to know the nutrition facts for a 10 piece chicken McNuggets. This serving size contains high amounts of fats, cholesterol, and sodium, so perhaps it is time for McDonalds’ nugget lovers to realize how unhealthy the meal is. Health conscious individuals have long known that chicken McNuggets is not exactly the healthiest food option.
Calories
A 10 piece chicken McNuggets serving is not for a person conscious about his or her weight. In one serving of the meal, there is an estimated 460 calories. A calorie, as we all know, is the pre-metric SI unit of energy. The rule of thumb in weight loss is to consume fewer calories than the body is capable of burning off. Now, with the 460 calories in a 10 piece Chicken McNuggets meal, a 150 pound individual would have to perform a moderate intensity aerobic workout for an hour! This means that the chicken McNugget meal can result in weight problems for any person.
Fats
A 10 piece serving of chicken McNuggets is also high in fat. It contains 29 grams of fat, or equal to almost half of one’s daily values. This means that the meal alone furnishes 45% of the total fat requirement for a day for individuals; bad for a single meal, as any nutritionist would point out. It is also rich in saturated fat, with about 5 grams per serving. This is almost ¼ of the daily requirements for individuals, based on a 2000 calorie diet. Saturated fat comes from animals, and can raise one’s cholesterol levels. Like other processed foods like lamb, pork, beef, whole milk, cheese, lard, and butter, a 10 piece chicken McNuggets has levels of saturated fats that are too high.
Cholesterol and Sodium
Likewise, a 10 piece chicken McNuggets is high in cholesterol. For one serving, it contains as much as 70 milligrams, or about 25% of a person’s daily requirements. The meal is high in sodium, having about 1000 milligrams per serving, or about half of a person’s daily requirements. The lack of dietary fiber in this meal also means patrons of McDonalds are missing out on essential nutrients for their daily needs.
Ingredients
It is also interesting to look at the ingredients of the chicken McNuggets meal to get an indication of what a person is eating by consuming this meal. Aside from chicken, the meal has chicken broth powder, yellow corn flour, modified corn starch, wheat starch, and a host of preservatives for animal and vegetable fats like sodium acid pyrophosphate, mono calcium phosphate, calcium lactate, among others. An inspection of these ingredients reveals that these are food additives suspected for having carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, characteristics.
The Bottom Line
The ingredients and the nutritional makeup for a 10 piece chicken McNuggets serving indicate that this meal is an unhealthy option. Nutrition facts for 10 piece chicken McNuggets prove the meal should be avoided like the plague by any health conscious individual.
References
Fat Secret, “McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets” - https://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/mcdonalds/chicken-mcnuggets-%2810-pieces%29
Former Fat Guy, “Whats Really In Chicken McNuggets” - https://www.formerfatguy.com/health/whats-really-in-chicken-mcnuggets/
Image Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
