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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

Also they've been completely left out of the vegetarian market other than for snacks.

French fries and soda are vegetarian.

Depends what they've been fried in and how picky you are.

There was a lawsuit a few years back when vegetarians discovered that McDonald's was flavoring their fries with beef juice. I do think they've since stopped the practice.

I'm still fucking mad about that. Frying in beef juice made them taste so much better.

Well, no one wins since they no longer use beef tallow, but do add beef flavoring to the spuds.

So we can't eat them and people who liked the tallow-fried ones don't enjoy them as much (?)

The “natural beef flavor” doesn't, AFAIK, have beef in it (except insofar as hydrolyzed milk protein, originating as it does in a cow, is “beef”.) The construction “natural X flavor” in an ingredient list means “flavorings that can legally be described as natural which are intended to simulate X”.

https://www.thoughtco.com/mcdonalds-french-fries-still-not-v...

Seems like as of a bit earlier this year, they still contained animal products, but this is in the US (in Canada, for example, it's vegan ingredients only).

So is this to say that McDonalds' fries are lacto-ovo-vegetarian, but not vegan? I'm not vegan myself, but I find this a strange category for fried potatoes to end up in.

McD's fries died the day they stopped using tallow.

I'm still saddened that Pringles aren't cooked in peanut oil any longer - they tasted so much better before; now they're fairly bland (regular version).

Nope, they still cook them in beef juice.

In the US they use flavorings derived from milk and wheat.

And natural beef flavors...

> There was a lawsuit a few years back when vegetarians discovered that McDonald's was flavoring their fries with beef juice.

They weren't “flavoring them with beef juice”, they were frying them in tallow. And AFAIK they didn't stop because of a lawsuit by vegetarians, but because of nutrition (saturated fat) concerns, and they now use other flavorings to attempt to simulate the flavor imparted by tallow:

https://www.wired.com/2014/07/whats-inside-mcdonalds-french-...

> They weren't “flavoring them with beef juice”, they were frying them in tallow.

They actually did both.

https://www.thoughtco.com/mcdonalds-french-fries-still-not-v...

> But when they switched to vegetable oil, the fries were no longer as tasty. The solution was to add natural beef flavor to the spuds.

> Admitting that the fries were coated in beef flavoring, McDonald's settled for $10 million, with $6 million going to vegetarian organizations.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mcdonalds-settles-beef-over-fri...

> The vegetable oil used to prepare the fries and hash browns was not pure, but contained essence of beef for flavoring purposes. Many Hindus consider cows sacred and do not eat beef.

Malcolm Gladwell did an entire podcast episode on this. It wasn't a few years ago, it was like the early 90s. And it wasn't that vegetarians were pissed, it was because someone had a heart attack from eating terribly, and then made it his mission to run a campaign against the "dangerously" unhealthy fries made from beef tallow. Eventually McDonalds caved for PR purposes.

> other than for snacks

If you go to McDonalds and all your friends get a meal, you're not going to be all that satisfied with just fries and soda.

…in the US. They’ve been doing vegetarian options in Europe for at least 20 years.

Maybe at McDonalds but KFC are usually meat only besides the side salads.

Haven’t been to one in a while, but my local one apparently has a halloumi burger: http://kfc.nu/var-meny/burgers/halloumi-burger/

kfc.nu ? Why that TLD?

Sweden has a big history with .nu (“now” in Swedish) and .se seems to be taken by a local business. Doesn’t seem to have stopped kfc.com from trying to redirect to kfc.se though when clicking on the “take me to my local site” button, oops.

Good catch, it must be hard to keep track of all of the global business's different domain names in a giant company like that.

Not where I am. Now, I've only been to a McDonald's once since I moved here (Norway), but if I didn't eat fish, I'd have nothing but fries.

They do offer three vegetarian burgers (apparently variations on the same patty), vegan nuggets, and a vegan salad.[1] It’s not as good as the vegan burger they have in Sweden, but it’s a start.

[1] https://www.mcdonalds.com/no/nb-no/meny/vegetar.html

They do sell salads

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