Malcolm Gladwell: McDonalds french fries suck, they should be fried in beef fat
Like most people (?), I’ve read a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I mean, his books are bestsellers for a reason – people love to read contrarian, faux-statistic bulls–t and social theory. Blink was one of his biggest bestsellers, but people really liked The Tipping Point, Outliers and David and Goliath (that last one was widely criticized, for good reason). I read Gladwell’s books because I find them to be interesting thought exercises and a fascinating way to look at history, success, civil rights movements and more. Gladwell has a podcast called Revisionist History, and in his latest podcast, he takes an interesting position: McDonalds french fries are trash. OH NO.
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest contrarian position could go over worse than the time he defended Lance Armstrong’s doping: McDonald’s 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 “McDonald’s 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 McDonald’s to swap the beef fat for vegetable oil.
Gladwell talks about how, at Sokolof’s insistence, the chain moved to a canola-corn-soy oil mix on July 23, 1990, the day McDonald’s “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 there’s 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 he’s right.
Is this a trash opinion? The whole reason I’m writing about this is because I’ve been thinking about it too much ever since I read this piece last night. I like McDonalds fries. Are the best things ever? No. But they’re good. If we’re ranking fast food fries, I give Burger King’s fries the edge, actually. And I f–king love Arby’s curly fries. But I’ll be damned if McDonald’s fries aren’t perfectly crave-able too, let’s be honest. I find this whole “fries were better when they were fried in beef fat” discussion to be… disingenuous, maybe? McDonald’s had good reason to change the oil and I’m guessing all of the vegetarians and vegans who like french fries are happier with the current oil too. (Also: Gladwell IS un-American… in that he’s Canadian.)
Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.
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