NontoxicLifestyle: How French fries beats Hamburgers

The Big Franchise French Fries Story

Once upon a time in the McDonald chain's early years, french fries were made from scratch everyday. It was like a tradition, Russet Burbank potatoes were peeled, sliced into shoestrings, and fried in McDonald's kitchens. They continued doing it this way but as time went by into the mid 1960s, they began to cut labor costs, reduce the number of suppliers and they made sure its fries tasted the same at every McDonald across the cities and states. 6 years after, they began to use mass produced frozen french fries and transformed it into a highly processed industrial commodity so instead of peeling and cutting it into shoestrings in the kitchen, the big manufacturing plants now peel, slice, cook and freeze two million pounds of potatoes a day, making McDonald the largest buyer of potatoes in the united states. This had a profound effect on the nation's agriculture and changed the way Americans eat. In 1960 Americans consumed an average of about eighty-one pounds of fresh potatoes and four pounds of frozen french fries. In 2000 they consumed an average of about fifty pounds of fresh potatoes and thirty pounds of frozen fries. Today North-Americans consume more than 100 orders of fries and approximately 150 slices of pizza annually plus 7 billion hot dogs per year.
Its taste is loved by many across the cities. French fries made more money for the franchise than hamburgers, french fries got famous, it does not owe its name to the potatoes, processing technology or the frying equipment at the restaurant kitchens. McDonald french fries is famous in the united states so is its franchise label to the point even other large french fries companies do not get the same taste using the same potatoes, processing technology and equipments. McDonald French fries owes it's taste to the cooking oil used to fry it.
McDonald cooked its french fries in a mixture of 7% cottonseed oil and 93% beef tallow giving french fries its unique flavor and taste. It contained more saturated beef fat per ounce than the hamburger. The public became alarmed and McDonald got more cholesterol criticism. To solve this dilemma McDonald switched to pure vegetable oil, then again they were left with another problem, finding a way of making french fries taste like beef without frying it in beef tallow. So again they sort help from the best ingredient in the market by the name "natural flavor"- this is the one secret of the many fast food companies, this is the reason why their fries taste so good- almost addictive.

That ingredient helps to explain not only why the fries taste so good but also why most fast food -- indeed, most of the food Americans eat today -- tastes the way it does.

"Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and look at the labels on your food. You'll find "natural flavor" or "artificial flavor" in just about every list of ingredients. The similarities between these two broad categories are far more significant than the differences. Both are man-made additives that give most processed food most of its taste. People usually buy a food item the first time because of its packaging or appearance. Taste usually determines whether they buy it again. About 90 percent of the money that Americans now spend on food goes to buy processed food. The canning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques used in processing destroy most of food's nutrient and flavor -- and so a vast industry has arisen in the United States to make processed food palatable. Without the flavor industry today's fast food would not exist. The names of the leading American fast-food chains and their best-selling menu items have become embedded in our popular culture and famous worldwide. But few people can name the companies that manufacture fast food's taste.

The flavor industry is highly secretive. Its leading companies will not disclose the precise formulas of flavor compounds or the identities of clients. The secrecy is deemed essential for protecting the reputations of beloved brands. The fast-food chains, understandably, would like the public to believe that the flavors of the food they sell somehow originate in their restaurant kitchens, not in distant factories run by other firms. A McDonald's french fry is one of countless foods whose flavor is just a component in a complex manufacturing process. The look and the taste of what we eat now are frequently deceiving -- by design."