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Kentucky Fried Chicken is perhaps the only restaurant chain that will keep an employee who urinates in the food, as in the case of worker Casey Diedrich of Omaha, Nebraska. The toxic canola oil fumes provide yet another reason to avoid KFC altogether.

KFC has long been known as an unhealthy place to eat, but most assume that its most unhealthy attribute is the frying. Unfortunately, this is far from the case. Frying in hydrogenated oils with trans fats is indeed a terrible practice, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is trying to sue KFC for making their customer's arteries "extra crispy". As common as this is though, KFC could not win our award based on this alone.

Surprisingly, KFC releases their ingredients list online for all to see, because they really have no shame about what they put inside their foods.  Do you think the top executives of KFC actually eat the foods that they produce? I am sure that the number is comparable to the number of doctors willing to take chemotherapy for their own cancer treatments. Here is the ingredients list for chicken bought at KFC:

Seasoning (Salt, Monosodium Glutamate, Garlic Powder, Spice Extractives, Onion Powder), Soy Protein Concentrate, Rice Starch and Sodium Phosphates. Battered with: Water, Wheat Flour, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Salt, Dextrose, Monosodium Glutamate, Spice and Onion Powder. Predusted with: Wheat Flour, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Dried Egg Whites, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Monosodium Glutamate, Spice and Onion Powder. Breaded with: Wheat Flour, Salt, Soy Flour, Leavening (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Monosodium Glutamate, Spice, Nonfat Dry Milk, Onion Powder, Dextrose, Extractives of Turmeric and Extractives of Annatto. Breading Set in Vegetable oil.

While it is tempting to end this article here, and let this list speak for itself, it is nevertheless prudent for me to explain at least some of these ingredients. From what I can see, the only completely non-toxic ingredients are the onion powder, sodium bicarbonate, and the garlic powder. These are only 3 ingredients out of 29, which means KFC ingredients are only 10% natural, and about 90% chemically "enhanced". This does not take into consideration the chicken itself, which is full of antibiotics, steroids, and growth hormones, in the very least. Please inform us if you see any other remotely healthy ingredients in the list.  Would you like cancer, mental disorders, or cardiac arrest with that, Sir?

Salt is the primary ingredient in their seasoning, which would be much less harmful if it were natural sea salt instead of chemically "refined", nutritionally deficient, dangerous table salt that we have written about before. Table salt is followed by the infamous excitotoxin, monosodium glutamate (MSG), which can (and does) cause migraine headaches, brain tumors, seizures, lowered IQ, sudden heart failure when combined with magnesium deficiency and physical exertion, and much more. In case you missed it, MSG is mentioned FOUR times in the list above. "Spice" and "extractives" are also mentioned multiple times, but since they remain relatively undefined by the F.D.A. (for the benefit of companies like KFC), these can be practically anything. These are mystery ingredients, in other words. (So much for full disclosure of the ingredients, and you can be certain that we will never get a full disclosure.) Perhaps we should offer a reward to anyone who provides us the details of KFC's mystery ingredients, and a bonus for which FDA-approved "flavor factory" where they were chemically engineered.

If you download the ingredients list from KFC, you will see that the 'healthy' canola oil is used in many of their meals. Canola is a genetically engineered offspring of the poisonous rapeseed plant, destined to cause problems in future generations that we cannot even predict yet. Canola oil is an industrial oil used to lubricate heavy machinery, and to add a glossy finish to the pages of high-quality magazines. Canola oil use at KFC will eventually result in high incidences of lung cancer amongst workers, due to the toxic fumes emitted by heated canola oil. Canola deceptively tests to be a healthy oil before heating, whereby it then breaks down into multiple carcinogenic poisons lacking any nutritional value, and the fumes from it are toxic too.

A recent controversy involves the new grilled KFC products that secretly contain beef, which is being used as part of a large marketing campaign by a competitor, El Pollo Loco. They also exposed that the "grilled" chicken at KFC is not even grilled, but is cooked in an oven on a grill rack to simulate the lines which are synonymous with grilling. We would not be surprised if KFC eventually just drew these grill lines upon their "grilled" chicken with a permanent marker, in order to cut costs. The petroleum-based ink would be less toxic than their current ingredients lists.

The problems with KFC go beyond the fact that their food should be considered unfit for human consumption. Kentucky Fried Chicken is inherently a bad company. According to Kentucky Fried Cruelty, a consumer awareness group, one billion chickens are killed each year for the company. All are crammed into "excrement-filled sheds" where they never see daylight. Many suffer from broken legs and wings due to being too top-heavy, and videos have also shown the routine abuse of animals in which the workers will stomp on chickens, or place them into boiling water to remove the feathers whilst they are still conscious. When KFC realized that PETA demonstrations (12,000 since 2003) had become a serious public relations problem, they created the Animal Welfare Advisory Council, in order to pretend that they were acting upon the complaints. Many of those who have been in the council have resigned their positions in disgust.

"[KFC] never had any meetings. They never asked any advice, and then they touted to the press that they had this animal welfare advisory committee. I felt like I was being used."

-- Adele Douglass, Former member of the KFC Animal Welfare Advisory Council, speaking to the Chicago Tribune.

Even the regular corporate media has not been particularly friendly to KFC in recent years. It was reported that while destroying the Amazon rain forests for its soy, KFC uses eco-friendly buckets. Okay, so perhaps that is not particularly redeeming.

As a result of all of the above (and more), KFC has won our Worst Restaurant Of The Year Award for 2009. It would appear that second to pharmaceuticals, KFC chicken is the most detrimental foods that you can consume without dying immediately.  Although, healthy young athletes have died immediately from MSG combined with a magnesium deficiency. Just look at the ingredients of their salad croutons and salad dressings if you do not believe they are an evil company that would willingly poison those who are seeking healthy alternatives.