I had no intentions of misleading people about the ingredients. If I did, there wouldn’t be much point in providing the link. I suspect that KFC changed the list since I wrote the article because at one point I had to update the link after someone reported it to not be working.

Based on your comment, I updated the list of ingredients with the information currently on their website. In my opinion, seeing that the chicken is marinated with MSG prior to seeing maltodextrin is actually far worse than seeing maltodextrin listed first.

Regardless of your judgment of my intentions, thank you making me aware of the discrepancy.

KFC® Grilled Chicken
Fresh Chicken Marinated With Salt, Sodium Phosphate, and Monosodium Glutamate. Seasoned With: Maltodextrin, Salt, Bleached Wheat Flour, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil, Monosodium Glutamate, Spice, Palm Oil, Natural Flavor, Garlic Powder, Soy Sauce (Soybean, Wheat, Salt), Chicken Fat, Chicken Broth, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Extractives of Turmeric, Dehydrated Carrot, Onion Powder, and Not More Than 2% Each of Calcium Silicate and Silicon Dioxide Added As Anticaking Agents.
Contains Wheat and Soy.

I’m not trying to say this is healthy by any means.. it has a good share of salt and MSG.. and “Chicken” doesn’t in any way imply white meat.. so it could very well be more like a McDonald’s chicken nugget.. chicken isn’t meat.. its likely “stuff” from a chicken pressed into a chicken patty..

.. but what you listed was the ingredients list of the seasoning sprinkled on the piece as it’s grilled.

Anyway.. I won’t eat this stuff, but your presentation of the ingredients was a bit misleading in my opinion.

I can’t comment on the taste of KFC’s grilled chicken because I’ve never eaten it. However, if you eat whole foods on a regular basis, chicken should taste reasonably good without doing anything special to it. If you don’t like the taste of the chicken that you’re cooking, perhaps you could try cooking it a bit less to prevent it from becoming dry. You could also try dark meat instead which I think is more flavorful. Beyond that, the best advice I can give you is to experiment with different herbs and spices and try recipes from health oriented cookbooks that don’t use questionable ingredients. The Primal Blueprint Cookbook and The Paleo Diet Cookbook (not released yet) are two that are worth checking out.

I’m glad you like the idea of the 80/20 rule, although I can’t take credit for it being my idea. It’s a popular recommendation made by many natural and holistic health practitioners. Eating tasty but unhealthy food does contribute some to quality of life, such as your example of eating greasy KFC on rare occasion, but pushing the limits often detracts from the more important things in life. The 80/20 rule is all about living with margin so that this can be avoided.

BTW, I should point out that I never was a big fan of that grilled chicken. If I’m going to KFC, I want the grease and the bad stuff. That’s a treat when you go rarely.