(FORTUNE Magazine) – The feathers are flying in the battle for pecking order in the take-home-chicken business. Boston Market and Kenny Rogers Roasters have much at steak, er, stake--namely, carving off the biggest piece of the $93 billion fast-food market. That's why they are trading jabs about whose chicken is leaner.

To wit: FORTUNE got hold of an internal Kenny Rogers study that shows--brace yourself--that its chicken has less fat than Boston Market's. The survey claims a serving of Kenny Rogers' white-meat chicken without skin has 0.6 grams of saturated fat per ounce, while Boston's has 1.09 grams. Does the company intend to keep this research a secret? Does a chicken have lips?

Tipped off by FORTUNE, Boston Market is crying fowl. "It's very misleading," says Alicia Stahlberg, a nutritionist who consults for Boston Market. "They've taken the numbers out to two decimal places, which is statistically insignificant." (FORTUNE is shocked. Shocked.) She maintains that both companies should score a perfect one, at least by government standards. Kenny Rogers, we bet, is willing to let consumers decide. Truth is that each company's chicken is a low-fat food by any measure, and leagues healthier than a bacon cheeseburger.

Leader Boston Market, which had system sales of $486 million over the past four quarters, now has 660 stores, to 281 for Kenny Rogers, which had system sales of $150 million last year. Kenny Rogers (the singer owns 15%) is a private outfit started by former KFC owner John Y. Brown Jr., once governor of Kentucky and still spouse of chick en hawker Phyllis George. Though these chains went national just recently, they promise to create a rivalry on the order of McDonald's vs. Burger King. Stay tuned.

- Andrew E. Serwer