By TED ANTHONY
NEW YORK — One day in 2020, at the pandemic’s height, an earnest-looking man with long hair the color of Buffalo sauce stepped up to a podium in Lincoln, Nebraska, to address his city council during its public comment period. His unexpected topic, as he framed it: It was time to end the deception.
“I propose that we as a city remove the name ‘boneless wings’ from our menus and from our hearts,” said Ander Christensen, who managed to be both persuasive and tongue-in-cheek all at once. “We’ve been living a lie for far too long.”
With the Super Bowl at hand, behold the cheerful untruth that has been perpetrated upon (and generally with the blessing of) the chicken-consuming citizens of the United States on menus across the land: A “boneless wing” that isn’t a wing at all.
Odds are you already knew that — though spot checks over the past year at a smattering of wing joints (see what we did there?) suggest that a healthy amount of Americans don’t. But those little white-meat nuggets, tasty as they may be, offer a glimpse into how things are marketed, how people believe them — and whether it matters to anyone but the chicken.
This weekend, according to the National Chicken Council, Americans are set to eat 1.45 billion chicken wings. So if you ever wanted a deep dive into what it means to eat the wings that aren’t — and how the chicken wing’s proximity to beer, good times and football sent it soaring — now’s the time.
RELATED: How to get cheap wings and other snacks for the Super Bowl
Today’s food landscape is brimming with these gentle impostors — things we eat that pass as other things we eat.
Surimi is fish that effectively becomes crab or lobster meat for many of us — and stars in California rolls across the land. Carrots are cut and buffed until their edges are curved and smooth, becoming “ baby carrots ” or, slightly more truthfully,…
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