Presumably, these are made out of real chicken.
  • Joshua Resnick/Shutterstock
  • Presumably, these are made out of real chicken.
Grist's Nathanael Johnson reports that The Center for Science in the Public Interest wants frozen chicken substitute Quorn to be pulled from store shelves, citing two thousand incidents of "nausea, cramps, diarrhea, violent vomiting, and death" that they associate with Quorn products. Quorn has responded to these charges by saying that their product is made from a common fungus protein and that "Quorn products have been tested in numerous medical studies, and through decades of testing and statistics, all have proven that Quorn products are safe and much less likely to cause a reaction than soy, nuts or dairy."

I'm not a vegetarian, but I do love fake meats, and I prefer Quorn's fake chicken nuggets to store-bought frozen chicken nuggets. In the past, I've recommended Quorn to people who wanted to experiment with fake chicken; the texture is great, they're not too greasy, and they taste way better than flash-frozen meat. The fake meats I like best are all derived from fungi—there's a fake beef served at restaurants like In the Bowl that I'd take over real stir-fried beef any day—and I expected mushroom-derived faux-meats to grow in popularity as food becomes more scarce around the world and as consumers become more health conscious. Let's hope they get to the bottom of this issue soon—food supplies are hurting on a global scale and we need to develop some sustainable alternatives while there's still time.