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I'm not a supporter of the big commercial bird industry, but I've never had that particular experience. I've never had a store bought bird with more than a normal amount of gristle. Maybe you just got a really poor quality, badly developed bird. The extra weight on those birds is normally meat, fat, and the water/broth/chemical soup they inject. Which is why I want home raised birds. But no, the extra weight is not gristle. The amount of breast meat on those is huge, more than you'd get with either heritage/DP, certainly more meat than you'd get on a leghorn. There's nothing wrong with using whatever breed you want for meat, whether they're big, small, scrawny or fat, they're all edible, they all taste like chicken (some better than others) and so on. But I hate to see somebody start off with an inaccurate idea of what's what.