Over time, McDonald's and other fast-food joints made the beef fat part of their signature fry flavors. But in the 1980s, fast-food restaurants took the ingredient out when health advocates criticized how much “bad” saturated fat it added.
In 1990, the company announced that they would replace the beef tallow with 100 percent vegetable oil. After the announcement, McDonald's stock fell 8.3 percent. The new fry didn't stack up. As it turns out, the beef tallow had added more than just cholesterol to the signature french fry.
At this time McDonald's in the US did use beef tallow in its fries but replaced it with vegetable oil in the 1990s. It does however use "natural beef flavour" in the oil blend that the fries are cooked in before being frozen and shipped to stores around the nation.
Founded in 1940, McDonald's initially used 93% beef fat tallow for their French fries in an effort to save money, according to a piece on the origins of the favored fast food item published by Atlas Obscura.
Before the 1990s, the crispy side dish was cooked in a vat of cottonseed oil and beef tallow, or fat, which gave the potatoes their decadent flavor and loaded them with saturated fat. In 1990, after controversy, the fast food chain made the switch to pure vegetable oil, but patrons longed for the same meaty taste.
Beef tallow isn't just more flavorful and a better option for high-heat cooking, it offers some surprising health benefits. Boosts your immune health – with unprocessed fats like beef tallow in your diet, it's easier for your body to absorb fat-soluble vitamins that support your immune system.
We use a blend including canola and sunflower oils to cook with. Like all vegetable oils, it's cholesterol free. We use only 100% Aussie grown beef to serve you the best beef burgers, sourced from farmers across the country. Our Angus beef is 100% Aussie grown.
"It's because McDonald's cooks their fries with beef flavoring mixed within their vegetable oil," divulged the content creator.
Are McDonald's Fries vegetarian or vegan in Australia? Yes! The ingredients list for Australia is one of the cleanest: Potato, canola oil, mineral salt (450), dextrose, antifoam (1521). So these fries are vegetarian and vegan in Australia!
Two 100% beef patties, a slice of cheese, lettuce, onion and pickles. And the sauce. That unbeatable, tasty Big Mac® sauce.
The claim that McDonald's dairy products contain pig fat has been denied by the company in several occasions.
Once at the restaurant our fries are simply cooked in dedicated frying vats in a non-hydrogenated blend of sunflower and rapeseed oil which is 100 percent suitable for vegetarians (McDonald's French Fries are officially accredited by the Vegetarian Society).
Beef Tallow is the rendered down fat from Suet. To make Beef Tallow, simply place Suet over low heat to render out the liquid fat. Both Suet and Tallow have been used for generations as an energy source, baking ingredient and cooking oil. Long shelf life is a big advantage for both Beef Suet and Tallow.
In a lawsuit that's been kicking around the courts since 2002, lawyer Samuel Hirsch is suing McDonald's for making his teenage clients (now in their 20's) obese.
See, a McDonald's hamburger is small and thin, giving it a very high ratio of surface area to volume. It is cooked well-done on a very hot griddle. These factors contribute to rapid moisture loss, resulting in a burger that dries out long before it can start to rot.
The lawsuit alleged that the company had, for over a decade, duped vegetarian customers into eating French fries2 that contained beef extracts. The lawsuit followed a spate of media reports detailing how the French fries served at McDonald's were falsely promoted as being '100% vegetarian.
But are the chips in KFC vegan? Unfortunately, KFC chips aren't vegan. They're cooked in the same oil as some of the chicken fryers, preventing them from being vegan; this is why the KFC vegan meal is only a burger and a drink.
KFC chips are not vegan due to their cooking process, which involves frying them in a non-vegetarian oil. While the chips themselves may not contain any animal products, the oil used to fry them does. This means that any KFC chips are not suitable for vegans.
KFC Australia has launched its first ever plant-based option — Wicked Popcorn. The meat-free bites are made with pea protein and feature the same spice mix as the chain's Wicked Wings. Wicked Popcorn is available in a box, a bowl, or as a Combo option with fries and a drink.
The taste will be familiar to Americans 40 and older who visited fast-food restaurants before 1990, the year McDonald's stopped using animal lard to cook its popular fries.
Not only do fried foods often contain extra sugar and sodium to make them dangerously tasty, but they also soak up some of the fat from the oil they're cooked in. That oil likely contains trans fats, an especially unhealthy kind of fat that's cheap to make and helps food last a long time.
Yep. The most common potatoes we use for McDonald's fries include the Russet Burbank, Russet Ranger, Umatilla Russet and the Shepody—varieties known for producing a flavorful fry that's crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside.
The potatoes we use to make our famous chips generally come from Tassie and Victoria and the high-oleic canola oil we use for cooking them is also Australian-grown.
Kentucky Fried Chicken will begin using low-linolenic soybean oil in their products in place of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, the chain's parent company, Yum Brands, announced Monday. KFC will make the switch to low-lin oil in its 5,500 U.S. restaurants in order to reduce trans fats in its fried food products.
Believe it or not, the Filet-O-Fish is actually fish. McDonald's uses Marine Stewardship Council certified wild-caught Alaska Pollock.