McDonald's Fries Contains BEEF!!! (maybe)

Great Debates
1

I was reading the Atlantic Monthly online when I catch this article
McDonald’s Fries Contains BEEF!!! (maybe)

[ul]In response to inquiries from Vegetarian Journal, however, McDonald’s did acknowledge that its fries derive some of their characteristic flavor from “an animal source.” Beef is the probable source, although other meats cannot be ruled out.[/ul]

Did you know that that wonderful, delicious taste of McDonald’s french fries can be attributed to beef tallow. Up until the 60s, before the fries had to be mass-produced, it was cooked in a mixture of 7% cottonseed oil and 93% beef tallow.

Of course, though now Mickey D’s has to rely on manufactured flavoring for its taste, it is derived from an animal source.

Anyway, this is an interesting article on how some of the most distintive flavors are faked by laboratories in New Jersey.
There! I have fought some of my own ignorance for the day. Off to MPSIMS.

But wait a moment…
If fries have beef as an ingredient, how do I know what’s in any food that lists either “natural” or “artificial flavors” as an ingredient. Plain M&Ms could have peanuts as an ingredient! There could be a shellfish in my ice-cream. How can I be sure I’m still a vegertarian, vegan, shellfish free of kosher.
[ul]The federal Food and Drug Administration does not require companies to disclose the ingredients of their color or flavor additives so long as all the chemicals in them are considered by the agency to be GRAS (“generally recognized as safe”).
…At the moment vegetarians often have no way of knowing whether a flavor additive contains beef, pork, poultry, or shellfish. One of the most widely used color additives – whose presence is often hidden by the phrase “color added” – violates a number of religious dietary restrictions, may cause allergic reactions in susceptible people, and comes from an unusual source. Cochineal extract (also known as carmine or carminic acid) is made from the desiccated bodies of female Dactylopius coccus Costa, a small insect harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The bug feeds on red cactus berries, and color from the berries accumulates in the females and their unhatched larvae. The insects are collected, dried, and ground into a pigment. It takes about 70,000 of them to produce a pound of carmine, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, and so do many frozen fruit bars, candies, and fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink-grapefruit juice drink.[/ul]
Shouldn’t the labels expand on the ingredients in more detail? Where’s the FDA in all of this?

Off to Great Debates!

2

I thought those fries were cooked in vegetable oil. That’s what the McDonald’s “nutrition” sheets said the last time I looked.

3

Didja read the post? He says they used to be fried in beef tallow, and now the flavour is just duplicated as an additive. They may very well be cooked in vegetable oil - that wasn’t the issue.

4

Just FYI, plain M&Ms DO have peanuts as an ingredient. I beleive it’s listed as the last ingredient on the package. It used to be, anyway.

5

Peanuts aren’t listed as an ingredient on the bag of plain M&Ms right next to me. Right under the ingredient list, however, is the warning that “M&Ms Candies May Contain Peanuts”. I’d wager this is included to cover their butts in case a peanut M&M sneaks into a bag of plain M&Ms and gets mistakenly munched by someone with a peanut allergy.

6

I’m not too thrilled with the idea of more governmental regulation. I think that if you’re really concerned about this, you should start a letter writing campaign and/or a boycott against companies that do not disclose this information.

7

Oh bullshit. I am allergic to peanuts. Do I just eat things randomly because accurate ingredient labels are too much “government regulation?” And if I get sick or die then I try privately to do something about it? The invisible hand is of no use in this case. JDM

8

TR, if we were only talking about people who don’t want to accidentally eat any meat products, I might agree with you. But this is a case where lives may be at risk. One of my closest friends nearly died from anaphylaxis when she ate inaccurately labelled food. This strikes me as the ultimate case of the consumer having the right to know.

9

What really pisses me off is that not only do the majors oppose full disclosure, but they have moved to resrict organic producers from providing honest labelling.

Now that organics are a boom industry, the majors have been trying to restrict the use of the term organic to mean anything but organic, and to prohibit traditional organic producers from honestly stating what is and what is not in the food those traditional producers are selling. It is outrageous!

Here is a quick quote from an article by Ben Lilliston and Ronnie Cummins in the July/August issue of The Ecologist which indicates what the majors have been lobbying for:
http://www.purefood.org/Organic/orgvsorg.htm

“The rules not only give USDA bureaucrats a legally-binding monopoly over the word “organic” but also empower the USDA to regulate or even prohibit eco-labels of any kind. As the proposed rules state: “the labelling or market information that directly or indirectly imply organic production and
handling practices” may be prohibited. Examples of prohibited labeling would include: “produced with out synthetic pesticides,” “pesticide-free farm,”” No growth stimulants administered," “raised without antibiotics,”
“humanely raised” and “ecologically produced.”"

10

Correction to “July/August 1998 issue of The Ecologist.”

11

Well, I’d say a good start would be to stay away from hamburger joints.

Oh, and that nice shiny piece of “organic” fruit in the bottom of your refrigerator? It’s loaded up with a product from the coccus lacca, or lac beetle.

12

No, you stay away from anything that does not make it clear that it has no peanuts in it. If you see something in a list of ingredients that says “various vegetable oils”, and you’re afraid that peanut oil may be one of those vegetables, then don’t buy it. It is your responsibility to secure food that has no peanuts in it, not food manufacturers’. I think that your perception of this issue is “Gee, if everything that has peanuts in it has to be labelled as having peanuts in it, that would be great! I could just glance at a label and figure out whether I can eat it or not!” But it’s not as simple as that. If we’re going to require this for peanuts, we’re going to have to require it for everything else. Instead of looking through a dozen ingredients to figure out whether there could be peanuts in them, you’re going to have to look through several hundred ingredients. I don’t think your life will be much easier, and the lives of the rest of us will be worse.

No, you accept responsibility for being careless. Yes, being allergic to peanuts sucks. But the world doesn’t owe you anything because of it.

The invisible hand managed to get dolphin-safe tuna to stores. What makes you think that it can’t get people-safe food to the store?

ruadh:

Inaccurately labelled food is quite different from inadequately labelled food. Was the the label incomplete, or was it incorrect?

13

If you would have looked you would have noticed this
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=53948 Thread entitledHTML1DocumentEncodingutf-entitled “Why does McDonalds add salt to fries?”

You would have seen this
8http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/rollingstone2.html

Which in part says
“The french fry (was) . . . almost sacrosanct for me,”
Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s Corp., wrote in his memoirs, “its preparation a
ritual to be followed religiously.” The success of Richard and Mac McDonald’s
hamburger stand had been based as much on the quality of their french fries as on the
taste of their burgers. The McDonald brothers had devised an elaborate system for
making crisp french fries, one that was later perfected by the restaurant chain.
McDonald’s cooked thinly sliced Russett Burbanks in a mixture of vegetable oil and beef
tallow, using special fryers designed to keep the oil temperature above 325 degrees. As
their restaurant chain expanded, it became more difficult - and yet all the more important

  • to maintain the consistency and quality of the fries. J.R. Simplot met with Ray Kroc in
  1. Switching to frozen french fries appealed to Kroc, as a way to ensure uniformity
    and cut labor costs. McDonald’s obtained its fresh potatoes from almost 200 different
    local suppliers, and its employees spent a great deal of their time peeling potatoes.
    Simplot offered to build a new factory solely for the production of McDonald’s french
    fries. Kroc agreed to try Simplot’s fries but made no long-term commitment. The deal
    was finalized with a handshake.
    McDonald’s began to sell J.R. Simplot’s frozen french fries the following year.
14

There are a few foods that are recognized as particularly dangerous to allergy sufferers, nuts being the #1 killer. Requiring a simple statement on products that they are or aren’t free of these handful of foods wouldn’t impact your life in any way. It might cost the company a few bob, but surely that’s worth the lives it would save.

It was incomplete and therefore incorrect.

15

There was a big article on flavor additives in last months Atlantic Monthly, available at http://www.theatlantic.com

16

The idea of eating mc donalds fries is as tastey as throwing up. I mean really, do people actually eat that stuff?:slight_smile:

17

You do realize that they’ve created a god knows how many billions of dollars a year business based almost solely on their fries, right? They are almost universally recognized as being the best chain restaurant fries that money can buy.

I won’t debate this any further, as I don’t want to get this thread thrown to IMHO.

18

I think that the slippery slope argument is perfectly valid.

That’s for the consumers to decide, not the government.

That doesn’t follow.

19

"You do realize that they’ve created a god knows how many billions of dollars a year business based almost solely on their fries, right? "

Yes, but definately not on their taste. They are universally recognized by me as the worst fries:).

20

How many of you folks who are crying out for more FDA regulation on food labelling are into “alternative medicine” and oppose the FDA attempts to regulate that area? Here at the SDMB that number is probably low, but I’ve seen too many vegans/vegetarians/crunchy granola-types complain about the lack of adequate labeling on foodstuffs, and in the same breath they complain about the FDA possibly messing with their herbs and “natural” treatments. Hello!? It’s the same issue - adequate, appropriate, accurate labeling of products that we use on and in our bodies.