Chicken Bites are one of those foods that can appeal to virtually all walks of life. Young or old, people can generally enjoy popping a couple bites sized pieces of breaded fried chicken and calling it a meal. Let’s face it, we can all pretty much imagine exactly how these new McBites taste without actually eating them. The question becomes, is it worth your time or money to try McDonald’s brand of “popcorn” chicken.

If you’re a fan of food industry bashing documentaries like I am—such as Food Inc. or Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution—you may have begun to avoid places like McDonalds and in particular items such as chicken nuggets. Particularly if you’ve seen the eye opening video below and you’re older than 12 years old:

Chicken McBites are a welcome addition to the menu. A promise of breast meat chicken (and rib meat according to the much too long ingredient list) is more comforting than a conglomerate mish mash of mystery meat, shaped into circles and crowns. McDonalds decides to serve these bad boys in a carton that transforms into a dipping apparatus to make the eating experience seem more fun. It also comes in three size varieties: Snack, Regular, and Sharable

So how are the McBites? The quick answer is “good.” But there’s more to the story. The carton is a little cumbersome. In the regular size, once the sauce is added it seems very top heavy and seems like it could topple easily. It also became pretty difficult to reach down deep into the carton when the bites get below the half way mark; you have to start using the index and middle finger chop stick technique. Which makes the next complaint about the actual food all the more pertinent—there are much too many really small pieces. It started to become much too tedious to constantly be picking up smaller-than-dime sized pieces. It got to the point where I was just grabbing several tiny pieces and tossing them straight into my mouth, skipping the saucing stage entirely. And the final complaint is that far too many pieces actually contained no chicken at all and are just flavored fried breading pieces.

 

The bites are priced at 1.99 for the snack size and 2.99 for the regular. Based on the nutrition info, you get 50% more when you step up from snack to regular and then double from regular to shareable. The few legitimate perfectly sized pieces I did get were really good, it’s a shame there are so many low quality “bites” to fill the order.

 

So my recommendation is to get the snack size. It definitely makes a great snack or add-on to a meal, but I wouldn’t try to make a meal out of the regular size. And if you get the shareable size you better share it or face the wrath of 97% of your daily fat content.

3/5

The following is the nutrition for the Snack Size, Regular Size and Shareable Size from left to right, click to enlarge:
Chicken Ingredients:
Chicken breast chunks with rib meat, water, maltodextrin, modified rice starch, yeast extract, sodium phosphates, salt, modified tapioca starch, onion powder, garlic powder, sugar, spices, carrageenan, natural (botanical and animal source) and artificial flavors, chicken broth, citric acid, spice extractive, gum arabic, lactic acid, chicken fat.

Battered and breaded with:
bleached wheat flour, water, wheat flour, food starch-modified, wheat gluten, leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), salt, spices, garlic powder, dried onion, dried garlic, maltodextrin, onion powder, citric acid, natural (plant source) and artificial flavors, lactic acid, yellow corn flower, extractives of paprika and turmeric (color).