The Not-So-Secret Story Behind Our Superbowl Chicken Wings
Do chickens really have six wings??
According to the National Chicken Council, Americans are projected to eat 1.42 billion chicken wings on Superbowl Sunday in 2022. To put that into perspective, the population of the United States is roughly 332.4 million people, so that’s four and a quarter wings per person, including babies. Despite the fact that chicken wing prices have risen by nearly $1/lb since last year, chicken wing consumption will remain incredibly high as families and friends gather to watch the Rams take on the Bengals on February 13th.
As we decide whether to get buffalo, barbecue, or lemon-pepper seasoning and take sides in the heated blue cheese vs. ranch debate, most of us probably won’t be thinking about how our wings contribute to the 1.42 billion consumed or how the chickens they come from were raised. But, it is worth pausing to consider whether our game day feast is making big corporations bigger or whether it’s helping a small farmer feed their family and continue raising better meat.
A bucket of chicken wings is a relatively recent addition to the American diet. Prior to the 1960s, all chicken eaten in the United States was purchased as whole birds. That meant that each time a family had chicken, they ended up with two breasts, two legs, two wings, and a bunch of bones. The wings were either added to chicken stock, along with the bones, or eaten by one family member at dinner. To get a platter of twelve wings, someone would have had to purchase six chickens.
Even after the industry shifted to cutting chickens up and selling them as parts, wings weren’t in high demand. Most of them were exported alongside other dark meat, such as thighs, because the American public preferred white meat. Everything changed, however, in the late 1960s and 1970s when deep fried chicken wings became a regional delicacy in Buffalo, NY, and then in the 1980s when their popularity spread to the rest of the country as an inexpensive bar snack.
These wings, which we have eaten in larger and larger quantities over the last 60 years, still come from whole birds. You can’t raise a single wing. That means to get those 1.42 billion wings this year, there will be 710 million chickens processed. Numbers that large are hard to wrap our heads around, but they’re important. With chicken breasts or thighs, one bird is processed per meal. For a serving of six wings, three birds are processed. And chances are, those chickens were raised in a way that was terrible for the birds, the environment, and the people involved. The truth is, the consolidation and exploitation of industrial chicken production props up our massive wing consumption.
Nine out of every ten chickens in the US are raised by farmers under contract with the large meat processing companies. These contracts include precise specifications for barns and feed that leave the farmers deeply in debt and reliant on monopolistic companies. Furthermore, the growing practices, which include confining large numbers of chickens to small barns with no room to move, lead to huge amounts of air and water pollution that negatively impact the environment and the health of the communities near the chicken farms. It’s a system that only benefits the corporations and those who want their wings cheap and plentiful.
Photo Credit: Rachel Carson Council, Fowl Matters Guide
Cheap wings do have a cost though. The cost to the people raising the birds and the environment is invisible when we’re sitting in bars or on the couch with a bucket of wings, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. At the same time, it also doesn’t mean that you have to stop eating wings all together. I think about the impacts of cheap chicken all the time, and I also love chicken wings. How do I reconcile these things? I try to buy local and I remember the rest of the chicken.
Smaller, local farmers don’t cause harm like the big corporations; they actively benefit the environment and their local communities. They’re raising their birds outdoors and naturally fertilizing the soil instead of polluting the water. The farmers are part of their local economies, rather than contractors lining the pockets of multinational corporations. They’re raising better chicken that I feel good about eating.
And, these small farmers sell wings! The thing is, they have to sell all of the other chicken parts as well. Farmers outside of the global chicken economy can’t just export the parts of the chicken that customers don’t want. They’re responsible for every single part of each bird. Anticipating the increased demand for Superbowl Sunday, they may process extra birds – leaving them with a glut of breasts and thighs – or they may freeze and save wings for months in advance. Either way, their income is being directly impacted by our need for wings on a specific date. Freezers to store wings, or the extra breasts and thighs, are expensive, as is processing extra birds.
Therefore, when I plan for Superbowl Sunday, I know that I’ll be buying my wings from my chicken farmer, and I make sure I’m also buying other parts. I might be making wings this week, but I can make baked legs next week, and chicken parm with the breasts the week after. The closer I can get to buying the equivalent of the whole chickens that my wings came from, the better I can support my local farmer.
So, this year as you think about joining in on the massive wing consumption this Superbowl, we invite you to think about your plate a bit more than usual. How did those wings get there? And what can you do to support the farmers who are raising them?
Next Steps:
Find a local chicken farmer! If you’re in the Boston Area, our Boston Area Better Meat Buying Guide is a great place to start. If not, check out your local farmers market.
Put together a list of your favorite chicken recipes. Figure out how you can use the other parts of the chicken that you will be purchasing alongside your wings.
Want to really take things into your own hands? Buy whole birds and cut them up yourself! Not sure how? Take our Whole Chicken Butchery class to learn.
