Ander Christensen has a bone to pick with the appetizer industry in the United States.
The Lincoln, Nebraska, resident urged the city council to do away with the phrase “boneless chicken wings,” a term he finds to be offensively inaccurate. He told the council during a public comment session on Monday that the phrase must go and offered up some thoughtful replacement phrases.
“Lincoln has the opportunity to be a social leader in this country. We’ve been casually ignoring a problem that has gotten so out of control that our children are casually throwing around names and words without even understanding their true meaning and treating things as though they are normal,” Christensen said. “I go into nice family restaurants, and I see people throwing this name around and pretending as though everything was just fine.”
“I’m talking about boneless chicken wings,” he said as the crowd giggled. “I propose that we rename boneless wings in the city of Lincoln. We can call them buffalo-style chicken tenders. We can call them wet tenders. We can call them saucy nugs or trash. We can take these steps and show the country that we stand.”
Christensen’s father, Roy Christensen, is a councilman in Lincoln. He urged his father and the rest of the council to take action against the name to save the children from misconceptions such as the idea that a boneless chicken wing comes from the wing of a chicken (they usually are made by frying chicken breast meat).
“We understand that we’ve been living a lie for far too long,” Christensen said. “And we know it because we feel it in our bones.”
