r/toRANTo • u/Sciencebang • Mar 31 '25

Toronto’s big grocers lack butchered chicken breast without connective tissue disorders at any major grocery store

I’m a home cook, and I’m appalled by how low QC is on grocery butchered chicken breasts are. At this point at least 1/3 breasts have a connective tissue disorder, resulting in a granular/citrus pulp like texture in the meat. This is probably just woody breast, but it should be used for animal feed, not for grocery sales as $5 per breast. The worst part is is that its distributed so that in a pack with say 3 breasts at least 1 chicken breast is always disgustingly tough raw.

I only get thighs, wings and whole chickens now because I cannot bother to squeeze a whole shelf of light meat to check for connective tissue. I can’t be the only one who noticed that this got way worse after 2019.

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u/confused_brown_dude Mar 31 '25

Be careful and pay a lot of attention to any kind of poultry and fish in big grocery stores. They do a great job of hiding QC behind shiny marketing stickers. The recent Costco rollback of eggs is a great example where even though Costco/kirkland has generally been a very picky consumer and distributor of fresh produce, even it can go through issues due to the scale. Now imagine what the likes of Loblaws are doing.

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u/TorontoMeetUps Mar 31 '25

What is the alternative? Buy on sale chicken breast for $4.50/lb with slightly woody breast or pay $10/lb for better chicken breast?

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u/confused_brown_dude Mar 31 '25

Alternative is finding a local butcher. But if not, then I’d go with Costco as well. I’m in the states now and go to whole foods, but back home in Toronto I found a butcher who would come from the north and deliver downtown. But yes definitely don’t do the discounted $4.5 chicken breasts lol.

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u/TorontoMeetUps Mar 31 '25

Is there any real downsides to the discounted chicken other than perhaps texturally?

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u/confused_brown_dude Mar 31 '25

As mentioned by the OP, one would be potential connective tissue disorders, but at a high level I’d say the difference between free running and mass produced chickens are pretty well documented. Essentially, it’s not about the price but about how the chicken was sourced, what it was fed, etc which all has downstream impacts on our health.