McDonald's french fries

McDonald's french fries, marketed as World Famous Fries,^[1] are a French fries product at the fast food restaurant McDonald's.

The french fries in a red french fry box with the Golden Arches

History

McDonald's french fries alongside a chicken sandwich

Introduced in 1949, the French fries were cooked in a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil.^[2][3]

In the 1950s, CEO and founder Ray Kroc established quality control measures for McDonald's suppliers, ensuring potatoes maintained a solids content within the optimal range of twenty to twenty-three percent.^[4] Kroc also pioneered the practice of "curing" the potatoes to convert sugars to starch, thus achieving consistently crisp French fries. This process involved storing potatoes at medium-high temperatures for several weeks.^[4] Additionally, he introduced the "potato computer," developed by Louis Martino, to calculate the precise cooking time for fries, based on the fluctuation of oil temperature during frying.^[4] Subsequently, in 1967, Kroc contracted the Simplot company to supply them with frozen fries, replacing fresh-cut potatoes.

In the late 1980s, Phil Sokolof, a millionaire businessman who had suffered a heart attack at the age of 43, took out full-page newspaper ads in New York, Chicago, and other large cities accusing McDonald's menu of being a threat to American health, and asking them to stop using beef tallow to cook their french fries.^[5]

After this sustained campaign, including by the National Heart Savers Association against saturated fats and the beef tallow they were using,^[6][7][8] in 1990, they switched to vegetable oil with beef flavouring.^[9][2] McDonald's has not disclosed whether its beef flavouring contains meat, but it is known to contain milk byproducts.^[10] In 2002, McDonald's paid US$10 million to settle lawsuits that accused the chain of mislabeling its French fries as vegetarian.^[11]

The "thin style" French fries have been popularized worldwide in large part by McDonald's and, to a lesser extent, Burger King.^[12]

In 2008, McDonald's ceased using trans fats in both US and Canadian markets.^[9] In 2013, McDonald's Canada introduced poutine nationwide, after having it in Quebec for 10 years.^[13]

Product

In the United States, McDonald's french fries are made using 19 ingredients, which include dextrose, TBHQ, polydimethylsiloxane, citric acid, and sodium acid pyrophosphate.^[14][15] The restaurant uses non-GMO^[16] russet and Shepody potatoes.

As of 2019, the french fries sold in Germany use a different recipe, with the ingredients being listed as potatoes, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, salt, dextrose, disodium phosphate and polydimethylsiloxane.^[17]

As for the manufacturing process, the potatoes are first brought to the plant, where they are mechanically cut, blanched, partially fried, flash-frozen, and then shipped to individual restaurants of the franchise.^[16]