What Is In Those French Fries?

Do you know exactly what you are feeding your children? or Yourself? The fact is the more you eat out the less you know! Just because you eat a vegetarian or vegan diet does not mean that it necessarily is healthy. Eating vegan only means you do not eat animal products, meats and dairy. There is such a thing as vegetarian junk food. Everyone has a little junk food now and then.  But what really is in the fast food we feed to our family?

Leave it to the imagination of businessmen to take fresh and nourishing fruits and vegetables, grow them with chemical fertilizers and insecticides, process the vitamins and minerals out of them, add preservatives to make them last longer, coloring to look better, and flavoring and seasonings to make them taste better. While there may be a case for making the food taste good, all those chemicals and processing could never improve the nutritional goodness that mother nature instilled in them.

I just read an article about McDonald’s French Fries. What child does not want to go to McDonald’s? Not only are McDonald’s fries highly processed, a recent article exposes McDonald’s for feeding the U.S. Market harmful chemicals that are not allowed in many other countries. And do not think that it is just McDonald’s that uses these chemicals and additives?

If we are going to eat fast food, shouldn’t we make it as healthy as possible? God forbid we eat french fries made of just fresh natural potatoes.

Fox News reported that McDonald’s fries sold in Europe have substantially fewer ingredients than the fries in the U.S. While fries here, and fries there, are both processed foods, less ingredients means less exposure to chemical toxins and less potential for future health problems.

Activist Michael Pollan reported:

McDonald’s Fries in the U.S. are cooked in hydrogenated canola and/or soybean oils – two of the worst oils you can use – both of which more than likely are GMO’d. 

 

American fries also contain TBHQ; antifoaming agents, preservatives, and color stabilizers. For some reason, American french fries also contain beef flavor, and are made with wheat and milk derivatives. As a result, they carry an allergy warning for those with wheat and dairy sensitivities.

 

Meanwhile, French fries sold in the UK consist of potatoes cooked in non-hydrogenated sunflower or rapeseed oil, and nothing else. Salt is added after cooking.

 

To prevent net necrosis, which causes dark spots and lines on the potatoes, U.S. farmers use a highly toxic pesticide called Monitor. This pesticide is so toxic, farmers will not enter their fields for five days after application……Once harvested, the potatoes are kept in atmospheric-controlled warehouses for six weeks, during which time they are inedible. They’re too toxic to consume before the chemical has sufficiently off-gassed from the potatoes!

While deep frying European fries certainly does not make them a health food, why would McDonald’s and other fast food suppliers include ingredients that are not necessary? U.S. McDonald’s Fries are not even vegan. Is beef flavoring really necessary for good french fries? Secondly, why would we want to feed ourselves with foods containing those ingredients?

More than 3,000 food additives — preservatives, flavorings, colors and other ingredients — are added to U.S. foods, including infant foods and foods targeted to young children.

Colorings, additives, preservatives and pesticides are not foods. They are certainly not part of a healthy diet. The absence of these….is automatically associated with a healthier diet.

If companies can make healthier versions of fast food in other countries, how come they can’t here?

The food industry and especially the fast food industry are making it harder and harder to stay healthy. Foods are contaminated before they are even pulled from the ground then further processed into something that Mother Nature surely does not even recognize.

The best we can do is to stay away from processed foods, even if they are the healthier versions. Give your kids a fighting chance at good health. Get back to the simplicity of whole, fresh, ripe, natural, organic foods for you and your family. Half way through the 4 minute video below Michael Pollan makes an important statement. He says “What predicts a healthy diet, more than anything else, is the fact that your food is cooked by a human being and not a corporation!” Get back in the kitchen and take control of your health!