A Texas mom got the surprise of a lifetime while preparing dinner when the chicken she was cleaning suddenly fell apart into stringy pieces, looking more like spaghetti than poultry!
Alesia Cooper, a mother from Irving, Texas, shared the shocking experience on social media, explaining that pasta was definitely not supposed to be on the menu that night. She posted a video of the raw chicken she had bought, showing how it was coming apart in her hands as she tried to clean it.
“I think it’s that fake meat,” Alesia wrote on her now-viral Facebook post, which quickly caught the attention of people all over the internet. The strange chicken situation even led some users to say they were ready to go vegan!
On March 21, Alesia decided to share the bizarre discovery with the world. She posted a photo of the chicken breast, which seemed to be “protesting” its fate on her family’s dinner plate. The mother of two explained in her post, “I been debating on posting this, but since I had to see it, so do y’all.”
Along with the image of the chicken shredding into spaghetti-like strands, she continued, “I was cooking my kids’ dinner a couple of weeks ago, and I was cleaning my meat like I normally do. When I went back to start cooking, it turned into this!”
Alesia mentioned she bought the chicken breast from Aldi, a budget grocery store, adding with a laugh, “lol I think it’s that fake meat, but I’m not sure anyways… I ain’t made chicken off the bone since.”
The comments section blew up as online users weighed in with their own thoughts. Some suggested the chicken might have been grown in a lab or even 3D printed!
One person commented, “That’s lab-grown chicken. It’s a new way they make chicken because, after the bird flu and shortages, they needed an alternative. Last year, they said they found a way to make chicken in a lab, and now that’s what’s in stores.”
Another user wrote, “GMO lab meat,” while someone else firmly stated, “Fake. I don’t buy it anymore.”
Not everyone agreed with these wild theories. One commenter offered a more grounded explanation, saying, “It’s not lab-grown or 3D printed. It comes from real chickens. The problem is greedy producers pump these chickens with growth hormones to make them grow way too fast.”
It turns out, Alesia’s “spaghetti chicken” isn’t an isolated incident. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, this kind of meat is known as “spaghetti meat,” and it happens when chickens are bred to grow bigger breasts faster. Along with “woody breast,” a condition that makes the meat hard and chewy, these abnormalities are the result of breeding chickens to be larger and more profitable.
“There is proof that these abnormalities are associated with fast-growing birds,” said Dr. Massimiliano Petracci, a professor of agriculture and food science at the University of Bologna, Italy.
While the term “woody breast” or “spaghetti meat” might sound unappetizing, experts say it’s safe to eat. But, unfortunately for the chickens, growing so fast can cause them real pain. Their bodies become so large that their legs can barely support them.
The numbers back this up. Data from the National Chicken Council shows that chickens grown for meat, called broilers, are growing much faster than they used to. In 2000, the average chicken weighed about 5 pounds by the time it was 47 days old. By 2023, chickens were still raised in 47 days, but now they weigh more than 6.5 pounds.
If you compare this to almost a century ago, in 1925, it took 112 days to raise a chicken to just 2.5 pounds!
These changes are driven by the growing demand for white meat, particularly chicken breasts, which has led the industry to focus on producing birds with proportionally larger breasts.
Dr. Michael Lilburn, a professor at Ohio State University’s Poultry Research Center, told The Washington Post, “If people keep eating more and more chicken, chickens will probably have to get even bigger. We’ll have to increase the proportion of breast meat in each bird, too.”
He added, “What people don’t realize is that it’s consumer demand that’s forcing the industry to adjust. A small but vocal minority are raising a lot of legitimate questions, but the bulk of the U.S. population still doesn’t care where their food comes from, as long as it’s cheap.”
Some companies are starting to push back against this trend. The New York Times reports that certain fast-food chains and grocery stores are now seeking meat from slow-growing chickens, believing that giving the birds more time to grow naturally will result in healthier animals and tastier meat.
But online, Alesia’s post had already stirred up a lot of emotions. One commenter wrote, “It looks like worms! What are they feeding us?” Another added, “I got some like that a while ago. It looked weird on the bottom. Things don’t look as fresh as they used to.”
Some people offered advice, suggesting others should shop for meat elsewhere. “You’ll get humanely raised and better quality chicken from a local butcher or co-op,” one person recommended.
For others, though, the sight of the spaghetti chicken was the last straw. One user declared, “I’ll go vegan!! Too much lab food around,” while another added, “This is why we’re thinking about going pescatarian.”
It’s clear that Alesia’s stringy chicken post didn’t just spark curiosity—it may have pushed some people to rethink what’s really on their plates.