Fat in chicken
Many of us enjoy chicken, especially the fried chicken that chains like KFC and Popeyes can offer us. It is cheap and it is delicious. What it often is not because of the extra fat used in the cooking process is a good thing to put in our body in large quantities. The fat that fast food chains places there is often added, but fat does occur naturally in chicken.
When we are being told to cut back on fats, we may find it difficult to restrain from some of our most beloved foods, but most of the fat in chicken as long as it has not congealed is not harmful to consume in large quantities. We can cut down in the fat in the chicken that we eat by preparing it in certain ways.
Yes, frying it is tempting, but as mentioned before, fried chicken only adds to the fat already found in chicken. Instead, try to bake the chicken in the oven. (Of course an occasional piece of fried chicken every now and then does not hurt, just as long as you are sensible about it.) Baking it rather than frying it causes some of the fats to come off the chicken and keeps the chicken as a whole tender and juicy.
Most of the fats that in chicken are the normal animal fats that you can get elsewhere and a certain amount of fat in your diet is healthy and necessary, but if you are concerned that there may be too much fat in chicken, the easiest way to cut down on the fat present in the meat is to take the skin off. This can be done by yourself after or prior to cooking, or you can spend a little extra money in the grocery store and by skinless chicken. (You can spend a little more if you do not want the hassle of dealing with bones either.)
Despite the names, dark meat and light meat on a chicken are not higher in fat than each other, but the dark meat should be consumed in smaller quantities than the meat from the breast, but the fat content on the wings and legs is not any higher than the meat from the breast.
Well, unlike fish, which contain a healthy fat, chicken itself does not, but we can reduce the fat by removing the skin, not frying it, and if we are eating wings, we might want to keep these to a minimum as they are usually fried in oil. (Most of the sauces used on wings are naturally low on fat.) Just make sure not to use too much Blue cheese or ranch dressing to add to the fat naturally in the chicken when you're enjoying your favorite football game. Now that we've discussed how to reduce the fat in chicken, I personally am hungry for some KFC. Don't worry, I'll ask them to hold off on the trans fatty acids and make sure not to eat too much.
