What is the best chicken or turkey for you?

It seems like a simple thing, choosing poultry. For years folks have thought that eating healthy means more chicken. This is somewhat true but eating healthy is not something that you can achieve by only eating chicken.  It is best to limit land animal protein to one or two times per week (chicken, beef, pork, turkey, lamb).

So what to choose and how?

With chicken and turkey look for the freshest possible. Check the sell by dates. While there are many stories about how grocery stores will repackage and re-date their meats when they are near the sell by date it is a good starting place. Most chicken and turkey has been frozen and it's not great if it has been thawed, refrozen and then thawed again.  You can tell if this is the case because poultry that is fresh or has not been refrozen and thawed will have a rose pink color.  If it has been thawed, refrozen and thawed again, it will have a tan color and the texture will not be smooth but slightly wrinkled.

It is a great idea to purchase whole chickens and roast them. The skin is where all the fat is, but like most things, eating the skin from a delicious roast chicken every now and then is not a big problem. It is the skin from deep fried KFC that is.  The great thing about roasting a whole chicken is that you can repurpose it for other meals -- soups, sandwiches and stews.

There is good evidence that you can cook your chicken with the skin on and just not eat the skin. There won't be any more fat or calories than if you cooked the chicken without skin, and you'll still get all the juiciness and flavor you get from cooking it skin on.

Buying boneless and skinless chicken is a great convenience. Many of our recipes call for boneless chicken breasts and this is a great lean, low-fat choice but boneless, skinless chicken thighs are a lot less expensive and they are much more flavorful.  They offer an especially rich chicken flavor to recipes.

Processed poultry, like chicken nuggets, sliced deli turkey and pre-roasted chicken are not really food but ultraprocessed foodlike substances.  These are not part of a healthy diet and you should avoid them.

Most of the time you only think of turkey around holidays, but there's a lot of great turkey recipes for day to day. It's really easy now to just buy a turkey breast. That's a great and easy way to enjoy roast turkey any time (and there's some leftovers for turkey sandwiches).

Ground turkey is widely available now. Check the package carefully. Ground turkey often has a lot of added ingredients including added salt (sometimes a LOT of salt). It is a little bit lower in fat and calories than ground beef, but not all that much. Interestingly, 95% lean ground beef is lower in fat, calories and saturated fat than ground turkey, so the ground turkey is not necessarily your best choice.  Here's more on ground turkey vs. ground beef.

Keep in mind that just because a chicken is labeled "free range" that this doesn't guarantee anything. Many free range chickens aren't really ranging freely around the barnyard. They simply have a bit more room in some cases. Likewise, there's no assurance that they have not been raised using antibiotics or chemicals. There are some name brand products now that are quite reliable, however.

You should absolutely look to purchase poultry that has not been raised with antibiotics. Purchasing organic chicken or turkey is a reliable way to know but it can be much more expensive.