McDonald's Fries Are Not Vegetarian-Friendly. Here's Why

The fast-food world is not a welcoming place for vegetarians, and although you may not realize it, that even includes McDonald's french fries. Despite how some big fast food companies have decent vegetarian items, the largest such chains in the U.S. are dominated by burgers and fried chicken. That usually leaves vegetarians in need of a quick bite struggling to cobble together a meal from the few plant-based options at most fast food chains. Typically, fries would be at least a half-decent way to start, but that isn't always the case, including at McDonald's.

How could fried potatoes not be vegetarian? That's because McDonald's french fries have added natural beef flavor as one of the ingredients. That's right, despite frying their potatoes in oil, McDonald's adds beef to the fries for extra flavor. Due to the typical ambiguity in ingredient lists, it's not clear what kind of beef product is added, but it doesn't really matter if you're trying to avoid meat. 

Also, the beef flavoring ingredient list contains wheat, which means McDonald's fries are not gluten-free either. That leaves a vegetarian asking why McDonald's would bother with this unusual addition. As it turns out, the company used to fry its potatoes in beef tallow.

This might seem incomprehensible to anyone under 35, but back in the 1990s, saturated fat was public health enemy number one. Up until the start of that decade, McDonald's beloved french fries had been cooked in beef fat, but tallow is high in saturated fat. In response to a dubious health crusade against saturated fat, most fast food chains switched to corn and soy, which are low in saturated fat but higher in trans fat. That seems wild to us now, but the things we consider dangerous and healthy in food are always changing.

So McDonald's joined the battle and made the change too, but unlike switching between different neutral cooking oils, ending the use of beef tallow had a clear effect on the flavor of the fries. Customers weren't happy about the change, so McDonald's figured out a compromise that would maintain the flavor people loved, but still cut out the saturated fat. Beef flavor is added to the cooking oil in the factories where the french fries are par-cooked before being frozen and shipped out. So everyone got what they wanted, except, of course, vegetarians who didn't realize what they were eating. 

In the end, the saturated fat health fears were mostly unfounded and partly came from a sugar industry propaganda campaign attempting to shift blame for poor health to fat. But one strange legacy of that to this day is McDonald's non-vegetarian beef-flavored cooking oil for fries.