Posted on 02/20/2006 8:23:38 AM PST by Kjobs
NEW YORK (Reuters) - McDonald's Corp. faces at least three lawsuits claiming the fast-food giant misled the public after it acknowledged earlier this week its French fries contain milk and wheat ingredients, the Wall Street Journal Online reported on Sunday.
The suits were filed by people with celiac disease, who have an intolerance to a protein found in wheat, the Journal said.
McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, had previously described the flavoring as safe for people with food allergies and other dietary sensitivities, the Journal said.
Given the number of people who are allergic to both milk (casein) and wheat (gluten), McDonalds is acting a bit irresponsibly.
You'd think they would have learned after the lawsuits about not disclosing that they used beef fat in their fries.
Yes, I have to agree. Disclosure would, hopefully, have avoided this lawsuit.
Must be the French part of Frech Fries...after all the French are milquetoasts.
Given the number of people that eat mcdonalds, it would be impossible for them to protect everyone.
Our local Mcdonalds is still out of service due to the hurricane Wilma. I knew you wanted to know that.
What we really need is a Nerf Planet.
The problem is lack of disclosure of true ingredients, not the fact that they use milk and wheat products.
I think that something in the cooking process mostly negates the threat posed by the casein and gluten, but I do agree that they should have made the information more visible.
You had to burrow into their website to actually find the fact that wheat and dairy products were used.
One would not expect milk and wheat in fries, which I always thought were potatoes!
Have a Milk Shake instead of the fries. There is absolutely no milk in their milk shakes! (:^D)
All McDonalds products are made from the same "food-like" amalgam, which consists of milk, wheat, beef, and XV-16, a vegetable grown from seed germ found originally at a meteorite impact site. The shapes and colors aof the various "food" items differ due to processing.
Soylent McGreen?
Frankly, someone with a bad case of celiac probably should not even be going INTO a McDonald's. This sort of reminds me of the people with the peanut sensitivity who pretty much got peanuts eliminated from airplanes.
In this case, no one has to go to a McDonald's, whereas flying in much closer to a necessity, and given the homeland security and municipal airport and faa, a semi-public one at that.
Basically, like with the beef fat, the wheat and milk is probably there to give the fries the distinctive "McDonald's" flavor. Would it be a good idea for them to make the ingredients easier to find, sure. But the amounts in question are so small that only those who truly have "zero" tolerance need be warned. I find this less offensive than those companies that put the "ZERO GRAMS TRANSFATS" on the package only to find that there are transfats, just less than 1 gram per (ridiculously small) serving.
I wonder if anyone cares about the acrylamide problem, the toxins produced when heating potatoes for making fries and potatoe chips (among other foods rich in starch).
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