The Ad Campaign That Changed McDonald's Fries Forever

McDonald's is revered for having some of the highest quality french fries in fast food. However, you may remember the iconic fries tasting different, possibly better, in the past. Indeed, in 1990, the cooking technique for McDonald's fries changed. Up until that point, the fries were cooked in rendered beef fat, aka tallow. As a result of one man's crusade for a healthier Mickey D's experience, the chain switched to cooking its fries in pure vegetable oil.

Businessman Phil Sokolof suffered a heart attack in 1966. The near-death experience inspired the otherwise healthy Sokolof to eventually devote his time and extensive monetary resources to educating the public about the dangers of high cholesterol, a known contributor to heart disease and the likely culprit for his heart attack, as he ate a lot of fast food. Sokolof founded the National Heart Savers Association in 1985 and began taking out full-page ads in newspapers across the country warning of the heart health risks lurking in fast food.

Sokolof's ad campaign rattled corporate America. After making inroads with Nabisco agreeing to modify business practices to cut fats from its products, he took direct aim at the Golden Arches; the ads bore provocative headlines such as, "McDonald's Your Hamburgers Have Too Much Fat!" Sokolof singled out beef tallow as making McDonald's fries too fatty. The company eventually bowed to mounting public pressure from the ad campaign. Sokolof continued his healthy food crusade, eventually building public support for legislation requiring nutritional labels on food via his ads.

While a vocal number of people wanted healthier fries due to Sokolof's campaign, an equally vocal number were unhappy with the shift away from beef tallow. When the McDonald's fries change was announced, the company's stock price dropped 8.3 percent. After years of fielding complaints that the fries just weren't as good, the chain reached a compromise, adding natural beef flavor to the potatoes during processing. However, this meant that McDonald's fries were no longer appropriate for vegetarians or vegans to consume. A class-action lawsuit was filed against McDonald's in 2001 by a group of Indian Hindu-practicing patrons who charged that they were tricked into going against their religion by eating beef, which wasn't widely advertised as being part of the fries' recipe. The company eventually settled the suit for $10 million.

There is much more in a McDonald's french fry than just potatoes and a hint of beef flavor. The many ingredients in McDonald's fries include a vegetable oil that's really a blend of four different oils, along with that "natural beef flavor," which somehow includes hydrolyzed milk and wheat. While the McDonald's website proudly declares that the fries contain 0g of trans fat and no cholesterol, this doesn't necessarily make it a healthy choice, as a large fry order contains 24% of one's recommended daily value of carbs and 29% of the daily value of fat.