I’ve completely lost faith in the human race and it’s all because of chicken tenders.

 

A little while ago I bought a box of chicken tenders from the supermarket. I was facing a few busy nights and thought it would be good to have some oven-ready poultry on hand. Because when you’re a gal on the go, you don’t have time to muck around. You need a dinner you can throw into the heated shelving in your kitchen and leave it while you organise your manila folders, live tweet and press buttons on your Blackberry. Behind every powerful, professional woman is a box of processed chicken that can be cooked in the time it takes to shower.

 

I’d had almost a lifetime of experience with these crumbed bits of dead bird so I was confident that I was putting a few delightful, easy meals into my trolley. I thought I knew what I was buying. I had no idea I was putting a box of frozen lies into my freezer when I got home.

 

A few nights later, I was tired, I was hungry and I needed a little treat. The tenders, which are produced by an Unidentified Chicken Company, fit these criteria. So when they carb-covered chicken carcasses came out of the oven, I was pretty excited.

 

Until I took the first bite and realised I had been taken for a fool. I have reasonably low expectations in life; it’s one of my coping policies to prevent my mediocre existence from driving me insane. I usually can shield myself from crushing disappointment by setting the bar low, that way if the outcome is shitty I at least get the satisfaction of knowing I was right. If it’s better than expected, it’s a nice surprise. But I hadn’t set the bar low when preparing for a bit of this chicken, because I had already experienced it’s chickeny goodness on countless occasions. This chicken being tasty was as much of a sure thing as someone in my family digging out the Shrek’s Christmas CD in December. It wasn’t fancy, but by golly was it glorious.

 

I had become accustomed to the tenders from the Unidentified Chicken Company containing a meat product that resembled real chicken. In fact, I think it actually was real chicken, or at least a very close alternative. But the goo coated in breadcrumbs the other night didn’t even look like it was once alive. It looked like the innards of an old, mouldy couch that had been left out in the rain. It looked like a massive collection of that residue that is left on your skin after leaving a non-brand name Band-Aid on your shin for too long. It looks like that gunk that gloved hands would squeeze from the artery of a dead smoker public health campaign ads. But aesthetics, when it comes to chicken, doesn’t matter too much. What was really offensive was the taste. It tasted like betrayal. It tasted like crushed ambitions. It tasted like the world had given up.

 

I sat on my couch seething, staring angrily into the air for its ultimate betrayal of being available to be breathed into the lungs of my enemies, the chicken tender manufactures. The people – if you can call them that – who did this to me did not deserve to breathe the same oxygen as me. This was the ultimate act of treason.

 

I had been tricked. Clearly, this was an example of cost cutting at its most sinister. Quality had been traded for profit, and we were all poorer for it. This isn’t a new concept, but I felt the rug had been completely pulled from under me. Nowhere on the box was a warning that the much-revered recipe had changed.

 

I know you can hardly write “new, shitter recipe” on the box. I know nobody is going to make an ad telling customers they’d replaced the chicken in their products with the fluff taken from vacuum cleaner bags mixed with salt and water. The tagline isn’t going to be changed to “the taste of poverty”.

 

But I feel like some kind of warning should have been given to me, an outraged consumer. I should have been given some warning that this clump of mystery meat was in crumbed in lies and seasoned with disappointment. Never before have I had so little faith in bread-coated chicken, or the world.

 

I’ve always believed in the good in people, but now I’ve completely lost faith in the human race. I assumed that humanity was stronger than greed and that people would do the right thing. But now I’m not so sure. If man is good, man would have never let that mass of concentrated evil be produced.

 

Now is not the time for cowardice. History will condemn those who stood by and did nothing with the conspirers. We will look back decades from now and hang our heads in shame. We have to do something with the little power we have. And so, I plan on standing up to the lions of injustice. I will stare boldly into the eyes of corruption. I will brandish a sword at the pillars of greed.

 

I’m going to write a letter.