Story Published:
Aug 16, 2007 at 3:44 PM EST
Story Updated:
Aug 16, 2007 at 3:44 PM EST
What do water and chicken have in common? You're probably paying for both of them at the grocery store and might not even know it.
Sam Drinkard is crying fowl.
"Why are we paying for water," Drinkard said.
Over packaged 'chicken' he buys at the grocery store.
"I would rather pay for something that hadn't been adulterated," Drinkard said.
The Chicken he claims is purposely pumped and packaged with water. "If you're paying 7, 8 or 9 dollars a pound for a package of meat that has water injected, then you're buying water. It's clear and simple," Drinkard said.
Armed with Sam's complaint of watered down chicken breasts, we visited several local grocery stores. We picked up four package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. We'll show you how much chicken you're actually paying for.
We laid out all four brands; Perdue, Tyson, Springer Mountain Farms and Pilgrims Pride. We drained them, separated them and weighed them.
The heaviest offender was found in Wal-Mart's meat case. Pilgrim's Pride with nearly 11% of it's contents water. Do the math and that means we paid nearly $.60 for the water found in the packaging.
It wasn't much better amongst the three other brands we sampled. We paid $.46 for Perdue's water, $.43 for Springer Mountain Farms and the best deal on chicken water was Tyson, at only $.39.
Add all four packages up and we paid $1.88 for useless chicken water.
"The consumer need to know that you're not getting full value for your hard earned dollar. That's the whole thing in a nutshell," Drinkard said.
If you think it doesn't all add-up, think again. If you buy two packages of chicken a week for a year, you could end up paying more than $60 a year just for the water in your chicken packaging.
The alternative, look for labels on packaged chicken at the grocery store. Some companies do not pump water into their product leaving more money for you to buy those potatoes to go with your chicken!
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