The Los Angeles Times got to wondering about the many different brands of chicken available at the grocery store. Their food section staff bought 14 different brands and roasted the birds at 400 degrees to an internal temperature of 160 degrees. They blind-tested each bird, judging the skin, the texture of the meat and flavor.br /br /The results? Well, there was no clear winner, they said. But the one that is air-chilled, Mary’s, received high marks.br /br /Air-chilling is fairly new in the United States and is used by a limited number of producers, though it has been fairly common in Western Europe for almost 50 years.br /br /Most American chickens are water-chilled, meaning a slaughtered chicken is cooled in a large, cold communal bath shared with (usually a large number of) other chickens. The baths are heavily chlorinated, as required by the USDA, and each bird can absorb 2% to 12% of its weight in this water as it cools. The liquid you see as you open the package of a conventionally processed chicken is often drainage from the water bath.br /br /In contrast, air-chilled chickens are chilled on racks in a room using cold air. Each chicken is still sprayed inside and out with a chlorine rinse as required by the USDA, but air-chilled chickens do not absorb water as water-chilled chickens do, and when packaged can be labeled with the statement, “No water added.”br /br /strongDr. Grout’s Comment:/strongbr /br /Perhaps the label might also say, “No chlorine added.” So every time you eat chicken out, maybe you order the chicken sandwich because you want to avoid the hormones and steroids in a href=”http://www.arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/articles/salmon_and_red_meat.html#redmeat”commercial feedlot beef/a, just remember you are eating whatever it took for that chicken to be raised cheaply and survive shipping. I’m familiar with Mary’s air-chilled chicken; I get it at Whole Foods. Mary’s chickens are organic and free range, and they are never debeaked – a process common in factory farming where distorted behavior patterns such as cannibalism, vent picking, feather pulling, toe picking, and head picking result from abnormal restriction of normal activities of free ranging fowl.div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4769404502414351890-3522884201922541552?l=arizonaadvancedmedicine.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div