The chicken in Subway Restaurants’ chicken sandwiches may only contain around 50 percent chicken, according to an investigation by Canadian media outlet, CBC. The rest: soy.

The investigation involved DNA testing chicken sandwiches collected from five popular fast food restaurants. The rest of the sandwiches contained mostly chicken. But in testing, Subway’s oven roasted chicken and the chicken strips in its Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sandwich clocked in with just 53.6 percent and 42.8 percent chicken, respectively. The results stood up after extra rounds of sampling.

Subway responded to the CBC in a statement:

SUBWAY Canada cannot confirm the veracity of the results of the lab testing you had conducted. However, we are concerned by the alleged findings you cite with respect to the proportion of soy content. Our chicken strips and oven roasted chicken contain 1% or less of soy protein. We use this ingredient in these products as a means to help stabilize the texture and moisture. All of our chicken items are made from 100% white meat chicken which is marinated, oven roasted and grilled. We tested our chicken products recently for nutritional and quality attributes and found it met our food quality standards. We will look into this again with our supplier to ensure that the chicken is meeting the high standard we set for all of our menu items and ingredients.

Among all the chicken sampled, there was a total of about 50 ingredients other than chicken identified. The chicken samples had an average of 16 ingredients. Some of the ingredients are expected, such as salt and other seasonings. But many were commercial preservatives and fillers.

One commonality was that they all had high levels of salt.

"People think they're doing themselves a favor and making themselves a healthy choice [by eating chicken rather than other meat]," nutritionist and registered dietitian Christy Brissette told the CBC. "But from a sodium perspective you might as well eat a big portion of poutine."

The full results on the percentage of chicken in the sandwiches are:

Subway Oven Roasted Chicken Sandwich: 53.6%

Subway Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki (chicken strips): 42.8%

McDonald's Country Chicken – Grilled: 84.9%

Wendy's Grilled Chicken Sandwich: 88.5%

A&W Chicken Grill Deluxe: 89.4%

Tim Hortons’ Chipotle Chicken Grilled Wrap: 86.5%

Update (3/1/2017): In a new statement to Ars, a Subway Spokesperson now says that the company wants a full retraction of CBC's findings, calling them "absolutely false and misleading." The statement went on:

Our chicken is 100% white meat with seasonings, marinated and delivered to our stores as a finished, cooked product. We have advised them of our strong objections. We do not know how they produced such unreliable and factually incorrect data, but we are insisting on a full retraction. Producing high quality food for our customers is our highest priority. This report is wrong and it must be corrected.

The restaurant chain declined to answer Ars' question about what actions it might take against the CBC or to refute the report's conclusions.