Red Rooster Fast Food Chain Under Fire For ‘Misleading’ Preservative Free Claims

The Red Rooster fast food chain has come under fire following allegations by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that the chain made “misleading” claims that their food was free of “anything artificial.”

Many thousands of New Zealand and Australian families make up The Food Intolerance Network, which brought the complaints to the ACCC over allegations that the food at Red Rooster is full of artificial additives and MSG.

Co-founder of the network Dr. Howard Dengate told reporters that he identified over 12 items containing MSG just from the nutritional values posted on the company’s website.

As per Dr. Dengate, “Their advertisement clearly stated ‘you won’t find anything artificial in any of the food made by us’; that is misleading.”

Despite Red Rooster claims that since September, 2014, their chicken nuggets were cooked in “100 percent Australian Canola Oil,” Dengate said, “Synthetic antioxidant 319 tert-Butylhydroquinone tBHQ is in the canola oil used to cook the Cheesy Nuggets and Nuggets. While this is not technically a preservative, it is added to preserve the oil, and the oil is not ‘100 per cent’ as claimed. The products contain ingredients that are artificial.”

Furthermore, claims Dengate, Red Rooster has a lot of explaining to do concerning the claims of no MSG in their products.

“In fact it’s hard to find any food product they have there that doesn’t contain MSG. By now they have changed it to say ‘no added MSG‘ … but any food chemist asked to analyse [sic] these foods would find MSG despite the lawyer’s trick.”

Accordingly, public beware! Red Rooster adds MSG to its roast chicken, chicken stuffing, chicken salt, gravy, chicken nuggets, combi salt, rosemary sprinkle, chip salt, and most sauces, according to the Food Intolerance Network’s complaint.

In conclusion, said Dr. Dengate, Red Rooster needs to stop lying about the products they use in their food, as he said.

“I’d like them to stop making misleading and erroneous claims in their advertising and I’d like them ideally remove more artificial substance form the food they’re selling”