McDonald’s Adds Yet Another Warning to French Fries

McDonald’s Corp. announced this week that the French fries served in their restaurants are not gluten-free. Until this announcement the company had said that its fries did not contain gluten and milk or wheat allergens, so they were safe for people with dietary problems related to eating dairy products. Gluten can cause allergic reactions or medical problems in food-sensitive customers.

The company’s announcement has angered and worried many consumers who are on gluten-free diets, because they had been reassured by McDonald’s that it was safe to eat their French fries. McDonald’s claims that they recently learned about the gluten due to new testing methods begun last year. New rules by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration require that the packaged foods industry report the presence of common allergens such as milk, eggs, wheat, fish, or peanuts be reported to consumers on packaging. McDonald’s is a restaurant operator and not in the packaged food industry, so they do not have to comply with the FDA’s guidelines, but they say they are doing so voluntarily.

Cathy Kapica, McDonald’s director of global nutrition, said that the company’s potato suppliers remove all wheat and dairy proteins, such as gluten, but the flavoring agent in the cooking oil is a derivative of wheat and dairy ingredients. The company decided that they should let consumers know about that, so they posted a discreet notice on their website’s listing for French fries that says, "Contains wheat and milk ingredients." Kapica said that the company wants to make consumers aware that the fries are derived in part from wheat and dairy sources, she claimed that those who have eaten McDonald’s fries without having any problems can continue to do so. "We knew there were always wheat and dairy derivatives in there, but they were not the protein component," she said. "Technically there are no allergens in there. What this is an example of is science evolving" she said.

Although McDonald’s says that it is advising consumers whenever they discover previously unknown facts about their products that might affect their customers, many of those customers aren’t buying their claims of not knowing. "If they're saying there's wheat and dairy derivatives in the oil, as far as anyone with this disease is concerned there's actually wheat in it," said New York resident Jillian Williams, one of more than 2 million Americans with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder triggered by gluten. "They should have disclosed that all along," she said. "They should never have been calling them gluten-free."

McDonald’s fries have been the subject of scrutiny several times over the last several years. In 2002, the company paid $10 million to settle a lawsuit by vegetarian groups after the truth came out about their restaurants cooking fries in beef-flavored oil, despite the company’s claims for over a decade prior to then that they had replaced beef tallow with pure vegetable oil. Last year at this time, McDonald’s paid $8.5 million to settle a suit by a nonprofit advocacy group, who accused the company of misleading consumers by announcing plans to change its cooking oil and delaying the change for months.

McDonald’s has been reluctant to change the taste of their top-selling item, so they continue to say that they are conducting testing to make their fries healthier without sacrificing flavor. And in doing so, they claim they are being forthright about telling the public what their test reveal, such as last week’s announcement about their famous fries actually contain 30 fat grams instead of the 25 they had previously claimed, and 30% more trans fats. Kapica said, "It's a very high priority and we are very committed to continuing with testing and lowering the level of trans fat without raising the level of saturated fat. ... It's a lot harder than we originally thought but that is not stopping us."