TikToker examines a Chick-fil-A chicken nugget under a microscope: ‘You’re not going to ruin it for me!’

A TikTok user is using his microscope to examine what no person wants to look at too closely: A Chick-fil-A chicken nugget.

TikToker Jake (@closeintel) has over 176,000 followers on the app that tune in to his microcosm explorations. According to one of his bios, his dream is “to educate people online about microbiology and create informational videos on different species … [and] basically everything about an amazing tiny world within our world.”

Jake captures all sorts of incredible visuals with his microscope, but what really caught the attention of the general TikTok audience was his investigation into what a Chick-fil-A chicken nugget looks like up close. As of reporting, over 7 million people have watched his footage.

“You’re not going to ruin it for me!!!” one commenter wrote. “Still eating it I don’t care what’s in it!”

But actually, Jake’s findings are rather surprising.

First, Jake looks at the skin of the nugget, where he says he sees lots of spices, plenty of grease and some small unidentifiable fibers that could have come from whoever packaged the food.

For the meat, Jake thought it looked “pretty clean and good” with no red or blue fibers — which he claimed he’d previously found in McDonald’s chicken nuggets. The red and blue fibers found in the McDonald’s nuggets, which he filmed in another video, are thought to be microplastics, although Jake does not explicitly confirm that.

A 2021 study found that “far too often” small amounts of phthalates, which is the industrial chemical used to soften plastics, have been found in food from fast food outlets like McDonald’s. The study deduced that this contamination could be coming from food-handling gloves. The Washington Post noted that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not limit how much phthalates can be found in food.

The publication Restaurant Business ran a survey in 2018 that found Chick-fil-A earned the top score in terms of “perceived cleanliness” by customers. Hundreds of diners were asked to rate fast food restaurants based on dining room cleanliness, bathroom cleanliness, kitchen cleanliness and food preparation cleanliness.

The sentiment that Chick-fil-A is the cleanest chain seemed to be reflected in TikTok users’ comments on Jake’s video.

“After working at [Chick-fil-A] I can say that they are one of the most sanitary fast food places EVER and use real ingredients,” one commenter said.

“They’re about as clean as it gets for fast food,” another added. “Not perfect but not bad.”

“Was I the only one nervous to watch this?” someone joked.

More from In The Know:

Listen to the latest episode of our pop culture podcast, We Should Talk: