That red and yellow sleeve.
That certain flavor in the oil that you can't quite put your finger on.
That one-two combo punch of sugar and salt.
What exactly is it that makes McDonald's fries so perfectly craveable, so addictively munchable,
time after time, visit after visit?
We found out.
"The french fries are pretty good.
"French fried potatoes?"
"Yup, french fries."
If you've heard the rumor that McDonald's fries contain beef, well, those rumors are
sort of, almost true.
It began back in the 1950's.
The company that supplied fryer oil to the McDonald's corporation couldn't keep up with
demand for hydrogenated oil, so they invented an alternative: beef tallow mixed with vegetable
oil.
The flavor proved insanely popular.
In the 1980's, though, health concerns prompted McDonald's to switch to remove the beef tallow.
These days, the fries are made with "high oleic canola oil," which has zero trans fats
and the lowest level of saturated fats in the vegetable oil family.
But since McDonald's wants their fries to taste the same, they supplement this oil with
artificial beef flavoring - which unfortunately makes the fries non-vegan.
For everyone else, though, mmm, tasty!
"Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"
Sugar and salt are two of the most addictive foods in the world.
Sugar has even been likened to a drug.
Dietician Cassie Bjork told Healthline,
"Research shows that sugar can be even more addicting than cocaine.
Sugar activates the opiate receptors in our brain and affects the reward center, which
leads to compulsive behavior, despite the negative consequences like weight gain, headaches,
hormone imbalances, and more."
That helps explain why the fries are so addicting.
McDonald's coats their fries in dextrose, a form of sugar, to make them more consistent
in their golden brown appearance, and then pounds them with salt when they are pulled
from the fryer.
When salt and sugar are combined in this sort of balanced equilibrium, the brain floods
with dopamine, the neurotransmitter that produces feelings of pleasure, and our willpower can't
hope to compete.
They say you eat with your eyes first, which is part of the reason McDonald's uses that
dextrose spray to make them all look golden brown.
That's not the only trick up their sleeve, though.
After the potatoes are precisely cut, blanched, and then sprayed with dextrose, the fries
are then coated in sodium acid pyrophosphate, which keeps the fries from turning gray after
freezing and help ensure a consistent pale yellow color, batch after batch.
The result is a perfect looking french fry every time.
Eat it up, eyeballs!
Speaking of that precise cut, another reason McDonald's fries are so good is their shape.
Measuring no more than a quarter-inch across, they represent the perfect balance between
golden, crispy outside, and fluffy, baked potato inside; any thinner, and french fries
turn into nests of too-crunchy mouth-destroying coating, totally devoid of any starchy potato
goodness.
Any thicker, and the crispy element is lost, resulting in a french fry that has more in
common with a baked potato, requiring you to bury them with condiments in order to get
any flavor.
"Do you have a life preserver?"
"Why?"
"Your fries are drowning there."
According to The New York Times, the thin-cut McDonald's-style French fry represents the
perfect balance - a fry that can
"emerge with enough crispness to stand up to a cheeseburger, enough taste to go with
a lobster roll, and the right stuff to stand proud on its own."
"There are several sacred things in this world that you don't ever mess with.
One of them happens to be another man's fries."
Remember that natural beef flavoring?
Well, there's another weird side effect of it: when the ingredients break down during
the cooking process, they create naturally-occurring monosodium glutamate, or MSG.
There have been a lot of rumors about MSG that have been debunked over the years, but
researchers have discovered one actual property of MSG: it interferes with the satiation mechanism
in our brains, and has been proven in some studies to increase overall food intake in
laboratory animals.
That means when you start eating fries, you may not be able to stop stuffing your face.
It's not your fault - it's science!
McDonald's fries are amazing when they are hot and fresh, right out of the fryer.
But they quickly go downhill after that.
According to an exhaustive study by The Takeout, McDonald's fries transformed themselves from
crispy, golden spears of deep-fried perfection to grease-sodden sleeves of inedible trash
in as few as five minutes.
Luckily, that doesn't happen very often.
That's because french fries are the most popular item on the McDonald's menu.
How popular?
McDonald's reportedly sells roughly 6,250 pounds of fires every single minute around
the clock, for a whopping total of 9 million pounds of fries served each day!
That's a lot of potatoes!
With that kind of turnover, chances are you're going to be getting those fries hot and fresh.
It's weird but true: the fries are popular because they're good, but they wouldn't be
nearly so good if they weren't so popular.
"Bwaaaaaah!"
From the earliest days of McDonald's, way back when it was a barbecue restaurant run
by the actual McDonald brothers, fries were on the menu.
And that helps explain how McDonald's has managed to make such delicious fries.
When you've been doing something for the better part of a century, you get really good at
it, whether it's riding a unicycle, playing Punch-Out, or crafting the best fries possible.
Thanks for all the hard work, Ronald McDonald.
Our taste buds appreciate it.
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