McDonald FrenchFries have added beef flavor

To All my French Fry Lover Friends,

I received the note the bottom of this email as a forwarded email mentioning that McDonalds adds beef flavor to its French Fries which are advertised to be cooked in vegetable oil. (Not that me or Abhinav have been to McDonalds more than 4 times in the past 4 years of our stay in Seattle, but a lot of our friends go and tell us that I can go too) Me and Abhinav too occasionally do have French Fries. We would eiter go to Ivars in Downtown and while feeding the Seaguls, would pop-in some in our mouths too, or ma be at the Pacific Mall as so on...

Basically on reading the forwarded email, I wasn't quite convinced, since it looked like a hoax to me. So I thought of contacting McDonald myself and here is what their reply is.

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From: "McDonalds.CustomerCare@us.mcd.com"
Sent: Fri, January 8, 2010 2:10:04 AM
Subject: Message from McDonald's USA

Hello Deepti:
Thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald's. We appreciate this opportunity to share information with you about our French fries.

For flavor enhancement, McDonald's French fry suppliers use a very small amount of beef flavor as a natural flavoring during the par-frying process at the potato processing plant. In the restaurant, the French fries are cooked in vegetable oil.

You may be interested to know that we recently updated our nutrition information to include the ingredients in "natural flavors" for all our US core menu items. Customers will now be able to find out if a natural flavor comes from a dairy, meat or vegetable source. If you are interested in reviewing this information, please visit our web site at www.mcdonalds.com.

We hope this information is helpful and we appreciate the time you took to contact us.

Lisa
McDonald's Customer Response Center

ref#:6579373

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You wrote:

Hi McDonald,
I am a McDonalds fan. As a child, I have had all my birthday parties at McDonalds @ UK.

Today I am emailing you for a specific reason. I received this email from a friend and was interested to confirm the validity of the statement below received in response to a question asked by this friend of mine. The remaining response is also copied below.

With anticipation on a speedy response,
With warm regards,
Deepti

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"For flavour enhancement, McDonald's French fry suppliers use a very small amount of beef flavour as a natural flavouring during the par-frying process at the potato processing plant."
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"Thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald's. We appreciate this opportunity to share information with you about our French fries. For flavour enhancement, McDonald's French fry suppliers use a very small amount of beef flavour as a natural flavouring during the par-frying process at the potato processing plant. In the restaurant, the French fries are cooked in vegetable oil. You may be interested to know that we recently updated our nutrition information to include the ingredients in "natural flavours" for all our US core menu items. Customers will now be able to find out if a natural flavour comes from a dairy, meat or vegetable source. If you are interested in reviewing this information, please visit our web site at * www.mcdonalds. com* ."
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