Posted on 08/13/2017 10:57:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Malcolm Gladwells latest contrarian position could go over worse than the time he defended Lance Armstrongs doping: McDonalds fries suck, he declares on the latest episode of his Revisionist History podcast.
Before you rush out and declare him un-American, though, realize he means well. Gladwell opens the podcast by telling listeners that McDonalds betrayed me so many years ago when it stopped frying potatoes in beef tallow, so his ultimate goal is to help the fries return to their former glory. But his personal vendetta is woven into the far more interesting story of Phil Sokolof, the drywall magnate who spent millions crusading against saturated fat and cholesterol, and convinced McDonalds to swap the beef fat for vegetable oil.
Megaphone @MegaphonePods Follow Malcolm Gladwell ✔ @Gladwell Episode 9 of Revisionist History is out! In which I take aim at the Golden Arches. McDonalds: You broke my heart. https://megaphone.link/PPY8679820909 9:14 AM - Aug 10, 2017 91 91 Replies 112 112 Retweets 483 483 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy Gladwell talks about how, at Sokolofs insistence, the chain moved to a canola-corn-soy oil mix on July 23, 1990, the day McDonalds changed the recipe of their fries forever, and turned their backs on everything I once held dear. He argues texture and taste suffered, and to prove theres general consensus about this, Gladwell interviews people his age who get nostalgic about the old fries, then feeds a facsimile of them to millennials who are too young to have tried the pre-1990 version. They all agree hes right.
In typical Gladwellian style, the podcast goes to great lengths to explain the dire consequences of McDonalds switch: Fryers started spewing a mist that left McDonalds chairs and tables sticky; workers protective overalls had the propensity to spontaneously combust; the new oil contained a mixture of scary-sounding, possibly unsafe compounds (carboxylic acids, aldehydes, and whatnot).
Yet Gladwells goal is a noble one: This is really just to get his beef-fat fries back. His parents didnt let him eat fast food, so he didnt try McDonalds fries until he was 13. Have you ever seen a puppy encounter snow for the first time? He burrows his nose into it with this look of perplexity and sheer delight because he cant understand where this white thing came from, he says. It was like that for me.
McDonalds, please just do the guy a solid and mail him an old Super Size box of beef-tallow fries Rick and Mortystyle.
HYDROGENATED vegetable oils are absolutely evil.
Along the same lines as the Twinkie, supermarket yogurts have gotten less creamy because they are reducing fat. Now they are sickenly sweet due to all the sugar (but marketed as “low fat”).
Fortunately cream top yogurts with 4% or more milk fat are making a comeback. Recently I had some triple cream yogurt with 9% milk fat and no added sugar. Very healthy.
I doublechecked this. Only 3.5 g of 19 g of fat is saturated. (Hydrogenation is a process of making fat saturated. All trans fat is saturated.) Of course, trans fat is waaay worse than naturally saturated fat, so any trans fat is terrible.
It’s unfortunate. Mono-unsaturated fat (Fat that can only receive one more hydrogen atom per molecule before its completely saturated) is actually the healthiest, and McDonald’s uses 9 g of mono-unsaturated fat. But again... any trans fat is pure poison. And their saturated fat content does come largely from hydrogenated soybean oil.
There’s nothing unhealthy at all about canola or soybean oil. Despite urban legends about canola being some sort of frankenfood, the name is used just because the plant’s older name had a nasty alternate meaning: rape. Yeah, canola comes from rape. “Rape oil” doesn’t look good on the ingredients. Even the less accurate “Rapeseed oil” doesn’t look good.
NINE percent milk fat? Is that yogurt or butter?
Skim milk isn’t so good for you, but NINE percent milk fat has to have a LOT of saturated fat. And, no, cholesterol is NOT the killer it’s made out to be, but that much saturated fat canNOT be healthy.
He is right. And let the movie theaters use coconut oil in the popcorn again.
Napoleon III. So much for the vaunted French cuisine, eh?
Gotta agree with this guy.
And Burger King fries taste like cardboard fried in battery acid.
Wendy’s seems to have the best fries now.
“GMO soy are poisons”
Nonsense.
Show one ounce of proof that there are any health issues with ANY GMO crop.
There is only illiterate non-scientific hysterical rantings that say GMO’s are harmful.
People will disagree about who has the better tasting fries of any chain but what they all share in common is this:
Halfway into your MacMeal, once the fries have cooled off, they ALL taste like lukewarm cardboard...
OK, so you get a few more calories with the old beef tallow.
Now you get cancer.
Absolutely!
Bring back the Beef Talow!
And while we’re at it
Tell movie theaters to bring back the Coconut Oil for the Popcorn.
Increased profits for all!
I only use coconut oil for popcorn. So crisp and tasty! Throw on some butter and a little sea salt.
Their fries have tasted like s### for years. Used to be the only thing worth going there.
The most satisfying French fried potatoes come from deep frying in beef tallow, also called suet. Cooking in lard or tallow creates the taste and texture that satisfies. Peanut oil comes close but is more expensive.
Lard is available in almost every supermarket but not beef tallow.
Mark Twain said if you cant get to age seventy by a comfortable road, dont go.
That reminds me of something I did regarding McDonalds French fries. Next to a McDonalds and down a short slope of grass was a Wendys. I parked at McDonalds, went down the short grassy slope and picked up Wendy's hamburger and then back to McDonald for the French fries.
At some point it became pointless.
This is pretty much the same process my grandmother used for making homemade lye for making soap.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_ashlye.html
“At some point it became pointless.”
Yep. Pretty much all the fast food burger joints—it’s pointless and tasteless. Why would you pay 6 bucks for a meal when you can eat cardboard for free?
The magic formula wasn't the beef, but the pork (lard)
AIR the ratio was 60-40.
Just because the genetically deprived blimpos couldn't eat the original formulation, everyone has been derived of their enjoyment.
I got my own fryer. I am habitually under my ideal weight.
Vegetable oil is worse for you than beef tallow. It is so highly over-proceesed and such a bad fat that I have stopped using it. How is it logical to squeeze oils out of things that have no fat to speak of?
Bingo.
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