The Chicken Thigh Food Conspiracy Reddit Believes

In a world of sensationalism, yellow journalism, and fake stories made up by social media users desperate for internet clout, it's easy to stumble into the shady underbelly of conspiracy theories. While a healthy dose of skepticism and questioning never hurt anyone, one must always be careful to avoid going too deep down into the rabbit hole of biased storytelling, unless they want to keep seeing misleading information everywhere they go.

Conspiracy theories aren't just limited to flat earth theory, which is explained by Scientific American, or lizard people, as fleshed out by Vox. There are also plenty of conspiracy theories about food. A recent "food-spiracy" post on Reddit shows that people have all kinds of culinary suspicions about everything from bologna and tomahawk steaks to olive oil and MSG. One theory, in particular, has some users convinced that a secret about chicken thighs could outright transform the world of poultry.

Reddit users on the forum r/Cooking had a meeting of the minds to discuss "food-spiracies," the first of which involves the idea that chicken breasts are touted as a better product than chicken thighs in order to keep the price of thighs low. "If you were in charge of recipes, why would you want people en masse flocking supermarkets for thighs, increasing demand, and raising prices?" the original poster asked, adding that money can often buy you far more chicken thighs than it can breasts, even though thighs "are just a superior product." "I believe cooks and recipe writers are purposely not telling the general public about thighs so that way prices do not go up."

One user disagreed, suggesting that the price of chicken thighs is low because they are often sold with the skin on and the bone in, meaning the labor cost of carving the meat is low. "And although thighs have way nicer meat, [the] shape isn't as appealing as a breast," they said, adding that recipes must call for chicken breasts because most people don't know how to debone chicken thighs. Another user said that chicken breasts are more expensive because of marketing that says they are "healthier," which has fueled demand for bigger, heavier breasts that inherently cost more because of their weight. A different commenter simply said that they would still rather eat breasts than "greasy thighs." 

We seem to have a debate on our hands. Only time will tell if Big Chicken will get involved.