I have made the switch to free range. I was resistant to it for a long time, since I’ve built up a lot of skepticism towards health claims. The only nutritionists I really trust are weightlifting enthusiasts — they tend to be on the cutting edge of nutrition, and are just concerned with results, as opposed to ideology or politics.
The quality of the meat in free range is significantly better, on almost every level (in addition to what the free range doesn’t have!). What’s interesting is that I can now taste the difference, and most normal store bought meat just tastes disgusting to me (especially chicken).
As you say, I don’t think its really the processing that is the problem, because all they are really doing is “reformatting” it. My concern is that what they start with isn’t that great.
Oh I am not saying its great, but I am saying cutting up a processed chicken pattey and visually comparing it to an unprocessed chicken breast cut is disingenous. I could take a patty made from the same bird as an unprocessed breast from the exact same bird, and you would still see the differences this blog poster is claiming.
I am not against saying no to industrialized chicken, it is unconcionable that they won’t even let farmers who raise these birds allow fresh air and open walls for these birds, but the visual comparision and implications made in the post cited in this thread are just disingenous. That’s all.
If nothing else, the texture difference is startling. Free range has a firmness, a density (probably from actually using those muscles) while conventional chicken often has a texture not particularly distinguishable from Oscar Mayer bologna.