My pal Tony Tollin meant well, I'm sure, when he sent me this link to an article in Consumer Reports on an important part of my diet…the rotisserie chickens they sell at Costco. Do not read it if you love those chickens and wish to keep eating them.
As I explained here, I get a weekly delivery from Costco and it always includes two chickens — one for my cleaning lady to cut up for me, one for her to take home for her family. I've been doing this for most of The Pandemic and even with the reduced physical activity that comes with not leaving one's house as much as I did pre-COVID, I'm down about 22 pounds. It's clear to me that swapping out some of the things I was eating for Costco chicken is a major reason. The article suggests this alternative…
Of course, people buy rotisserie chickens when they don't want to cook at home. But Amy Keating, RD, CR's resident nutritionist, says a roast chicken can be a simple meal to prepare once you get your recipe down. It can be healthier, too.
"You can roast your own chicken using the oven, multi-cooker, grill, or even convection toaster oven," she says. "But skip the salt, or use just a touch, and season it with a variety of dried herbs and spices, such as pepper, thyme, rosemary, sage, and garlic powder. For extra flavor, you can put several garlic cloves and a lemon sliced in quarters in the cavity of the bird."
I'm sure Registered Dietitian Keating also means well and she's probably right for people who can cook. I can't. I really can't.
And I'm not one of those "I can do anything if I work hard enough" people. I long ago accepted the simple realities of my limitations. I'm not going to be a jockey or a ballet dancer or an opera singer or a nuclear physicist or a fine surgeon or anything else that requires skills I simply do not have. My life is a lot better because I chose to pursue what I was least lousy at…i.e., writing. I'm not saying I'm great at that; just that I can name hundreds of professions for which I have even less natural talent.
I also don't have the interest or the time. And every time I see an article that urges folks to cook at home because it's less expensive, I think, "Not if you spend two hours cooking something (plus a half-hour of clean-up) and when it's done, you take two bites, throw it all in the trash and call up Grubhub on your phone." I've done that many times. I'm not even sure all of the so-called "healthy alternatives" would be healthy if I cooked them. I once cooked chicken breasts that were like leather on the outside and almost raw on the inside. And into the garbage they went.
I'm not happy that Costco chickens have so much wrong with them. But I suspect a lot of things I eat have moral or health issues and I just don't know about them. The Consumer Reports nutritionist recommends that if you're determined to eat chicken from Costco, you buy their more expensive Kirkland Signature Organic version which sells for more than twice the price at Costcos in New York. If they had them out here, I would. I have tried the organic rotisserie chickens from Whole Foods but found them sparse on meat and so untasty that I thought maybe I'd cooked them. They always seem to have been sitting there since before Jeff Bezos bought the chain.
The fact is that we put up with a lot of products that are not as good (or ethically produced) as we'd like. Making your own is not always an option. Tomorrow, if you found out that the shoes you like are made in a sweat shop somewhere by children making a buck a week, I don't think "I'll make my own shoes at home" would be a viable solution. I'm not saying there aren't alternatives but making your own is not always practical.