Subway chicken may not actually be what it is advertised as. A lab at Trent University in Canada recently tested chicken from multiple fast food restaurants, including Subway. They tested six types of chicken from Subway, each multiple times, and took the average percentage of chicken in the samples. Subway’s worst results came from their chicken strips and oven roasted chicken, which are made up of 43% and 54% chicken respectively. Daniel Bastola, senior, said, “I would think twice about going to Subway now. I would probably decide to go somewhere else instead.” These scores are lower than that of fast food restaurants which are typically considered unhealthy, such as McDonalds’ country grilled chicken at 84.9%, Wendy’s grilled chicken sandwich at 88.5%, and A&W’s chicken grill deluxe at 89.4%.

The researchers said the test results show rough estimates and are not exact numbers. The fact that Subway’s results are so far away from those of other fast food chains raises red flags. Researchers also acknowledged that no chicken would test at 100% due to seasonings and marinating, but the levels seen in Subway’s chicken does not come from seasoning. The remaining percentage is made up of soy, which means the healthy chicken advertised by Subway is not the clean protein source they claim it to be. Fritz Friederichs, junior, said, “They’re stealing my gains. They’re taking away the lean protein that makes me big.”
Subway’s president, Suzanne Greco said, “The allegation that our chicken is only 50% chicken is 100% wrong.” Subway then released a statement of their own study, which showed soy only making up 1% of their chicken. These tests, however, were different from the ones conducted at Trent University.