white turkey

[Victor Steinbok]

I just got off the phone with Kraft Foods Consumer Relations and they
told me something I found interesting--that's IF thy answered my question.

BJ's carries pre-packaged Oscar Mayer Smoked Turkey Breast--or so it
appears from a quick glance at the package. A closer examination reveals
that what the label actually says is "Smoked Turkey Breast & White
Turkey". The ingredient list reveals the following items at the top of
the list: turkey breast, water, white turkey. The rest of the
ingredients reads like a pharmacy, so I'm going to skip it (the usual
assortment of preservative and solidifiers).

The question that bothered me, given that the primary ingredient is
"turkey breast", what on earth is "white turkey"?

Kraft people answered the phone quickly, as customer service lines
usually do. I asked my question and gave them the UPC number on the
package. The rep courteously asked for time away from the phone to
research the question, then came back four times during the next
half-hour to ask for more time to continue researching. In the end, he
said that he was told that "white turkey" is just turkey breast meat,
but they just like to identify the source of the meat, so they list
"turkey breast" first. He could not explain why the word "meat" does not
appear or why it was necessary to list two separate ingredients that
supposedly came from the same source. He really could not offer a full
explanation.

I suggest a likely explanation. "Turkey breast" refers to integral cuts
of meat taken out from full breasts of turkeys. "White turkey" is the
remaining turkey breast crumbs and trimmings that remain behind after
the rest of the breast is carved up into standard pieces (it's not clear
whether they include skin or not). They are then processed and gelled to
produce "white turkey" paste that's used to give a particular shape to
the product to make the cuts uniform. They can't call it "meat" because
it's processed and they can't call it "turkey breast" because that
implies whole pieces. It's like the McNuggets vs. other chicken nuggets
made from "real chicken breast [pieces]". The former is ground,
processed and shaped "meat" product, while the latter is actual carved
out chunks (usually from what is euphemistically called "chicken
tenders", which also serve as the base for the supposed "boneless
wings"--no, I'm not making it up: most "boneless buffalo wings" are made
from parts of chicken breast and have no connection to wings whatsoever).

All of this is not quite as compelling as the story of "pink slime", but
it does point to the amazing capacity of food processors to come up with
euphemistic names for the products that most people would find unappetizing.

     VS-)

PS: For the record, this is not a product I would normally consume. But
I'm always willing to sacrifice gustatory quality for the sake of
research ;-)

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