Woman Reveals The One Label You Should Look For On Chicken That Most Shoppers Completely Miss

Most people grab organic chicken at the store because they think it’s the healthiest option. But one woman says there’s actually something else you should be checking on the label that hardly anyone knows about.

According to Bro Bible, Nicole, who posts content under the name nicole_holistic, recently made a TikTok video about buying chicken that has racked up more than 629,000 views. In the clip, she’s standing in a grocery store explaining why she’s starting to question whether organic chicken is really the best pick.

Nicole says that organic chicken isn’t always as clean as you’d think because of how companies process it. She says organic chicken usually contains 5% retained water, which basically means it was soaked in a pool filled with chlorine to keep it fresh longer. What you should look for instead, she suggests, is a label saying the chicken is 100% air chilled. “That means once it’s taken out, it’s just being chilled up here, not being dumped for preservatives,” she explains.

Air-Chilled Chicken Might Be Worth The Extra Cost

The USDA has rules saying chicken needs to be cooled down to at least 40 degrees pretty quickly after it’s processed. Companies can do this in two ways: with water or with air.

Most chicken sellers in America use the water method. They drop the chickens into big tanks filled with ice-cold water that has chlorine in it. During this process, the chickens soak up as much as 12% of their weight in this chlorinated water. 

This waters down the taste and you can sometimes see it pooling at the bottom of the package when you buy it. The whole thing is kind of shocking, almost like finding out about Burger King’s secret ingredient in their Halloween Whoppers.

Air chilling is totally different. Each chicken gets hung up separately and moved through cold rooms for a few hours. This cools them down gradually without dunking them in any water. They still get a light spray of chlorine mist, but they’re not sitting in a bath of it.

When you buy air-chilled chicken, you get better taste because the natural juices stay in the meat instead of getting watered down. It cooks quicker too since there’s no extra water that needs to evaporate first. The skin gets nice and crispy when you cook it, and there’s less chance of germs spreading between different birds. Plus, you’re actually paying for real chicken and not water weight.

The downside is that air-chilled chicken usually costs more money because it takes companies longer to process it this way. You can find it at places like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Sprouts Farmers Market from brands like Bell & Evans and Mary’s Family Farms.

People had a lot to say about Nicole’s video. One person commented, “I truly just buy whatever is cheapest.” Another wrote, “How about they just stop poisoning us instead.” Someone else added, “I’m tired.” 

One commenter said, “god can we have anything.” It seems like people are getting worn out trying to figure out what’s actually in their food, kind of like a viral TikTok review questioning what Arby’s steak nuggets are actually made of.