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Chicken nuggets are a quintessentially American food: easily mass-produced and a quick, convenient protein source that can be eaten on the go. A staple of fast food restaurants and grocery freezer aisles for decades, they weren’t always on America’s dinner plates and children’s menus. It would take war, laboratory experiments and changing U.S. dietary guidelines before chains like McDonald’s catapulted chicken nuggets to a household name.

World War II’s Chicken Problem

During World War II, chicken became many Americans’ primary source of protein after the U.S. military commandeered red meat for soldiers, creating a beef shortage at home. The massive chicken demand incentivized businesses to produce the birds more cheaply, says anthropologist Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food: “World War II encouraged the spread, modernization and industrialization of chicken on a much larger scale.”

Late in the war, the military came for chicken, too: “In the spring of 1945, the War Food Administration requisitioned almost 100 percent of the production in the Delmarva peninsula (spanning Dela

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