The Iconic Childhood Food That Didn't Exist Before 1963

The humble chicken nugget is beloved on restaurant menus and in cafeterias the world over. A simple joy to make in your air fryer at home and a delight with all kinds of sauces from sweet and sour to barbecue to ketchup, if you're so inclined. Whether you like them with a potato chip crust, made from all breast meat, or shaped like dinosaurs, kids and adults have been addicted to these things for years. But that only started in 1963, because that was the year chicken nuggets were invented.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and that's where Robert C. Baker came in. During World War II, red meat was scarce and chickens became a popular item in many American kitchens. However, when the war ended, meat rationing ended with it, and people could have beef and pork again. With soldiers back from war, a single chicken was not enough to feed a full family. Chickens were always sold whole and were only about half as large as the chickens we have today. The birds began to fall by the wayside because they were just inconvenient.

Baker, a scientist at Cornell University, was trying to find ways to make the most of chicken, and he came up with several ideas. His "chicken sticks" (what we call chicken nuggets now) were the big winner. Made from ground chicken meat and then breaded, they allowed producers to get maximum use out of a chicken while also being easy to transport and store. The chicken nugget was ingenious, but it didn't catch on right away.

Chicken nuggets languished for over a decade, not really becoming a commonplace item on dinner plates across the country until 1977. That was the year that congress released Dietary Goals for the United States, a document outlining ways to improve the American diet. It recommended that people eat less red meat and consume more chicken because chicken was more affordable and lower in fat.

Nuggets became an easy way to have chicken in your diet without roasting a whole bird. It's ironic now to consider chicken nuggets as part of a health craze, but the fact that they were processed and breaded didn't really factor into the boom in their popularity at the time. McDonald's rolled out Chicken McNuggets in 1981, and soon, the nugget craze was sweeping the nation. By 1983, when McNuggets went national, McDonald's was selling 5 million pounds per week.

Frozen nuggets are a $2 billion industry in America today (per Vox), and that doesn't count restaurant sales. On that front, in 2018, which is the most recent year figures are available from Fooddive, 2.3 billion nuggets were served to customers. Given how commonplace they are now, with so many fast food nuggets available, not to mention all the brands of frozen nuggets you can buy, it's hard to imagine that your grandparents never even had them as kids. If you're in the mood for nuggets now, why not try making your own at home?