Why Your McDonald's Fries Don't Taste As Good As You Remember

McDonald's isn't the same without its best-selling menu item: the fries. The chain sells more than nine million pounds of french fries every day, so it's safe to say people love them, but if you noticed that they taste different from when you were a kid, you're not alone. Before the early 1990s, McDonald's used frying oil that was mostly beef tallow, which is fat rendered from cows. It made for a delicious batch, sure, but beef tallow is mostly saturated fat, which, according to some studies, might increase the chances of developing heart disease. This prompted the fast food giant to switch to a different formula that many diners claim diminished the quality of the famed menu item.

The issue of saturated fats has been brewing since the 1950s, but it wasn't until the '90s that the public concern escalated. These concerns over saturated fat are why people stopped using beef tallow in their recipes, why the use of saturated fats is more regulated now than before, and why Mickey D's completely removed beef tallow from its frying oil formula. Things took a turn after Phil Sokolof, an activist and businessman, launched his three-million-dollar self-funded campaign, which urged companies to switch to less harmful ingredients, making him known as the one man who convinced McDonald's to stop using beef tallow.

Phil Sokolof was inspired to take action because of his own experience with a heart attack in the late '60s, but it wasn't until the early '80s when a study on heart disease proved that cholesterol was one of the causes. This was when Sokolof started the National Heart Savers Association, and the first order of business was to alert the public all about it. He emailed individuals related to food companies and even published several ads in newspapers about food processors and how they were using dangerous ingredients. Eventually, Sokolof targeted McDonald's, pressuring it into removing elements that were high in trans fat, leaving similar businesses to succumb — especially after it affected its sales.

As such, McDonald's and other popular fast-food chains like Wendy's and Burger King changed the  formula of fries and even developed a burger with a lower fat percentage. While McDonald's is far from being the fast food chain with the healthiest fries, it seems to be a far cry from the beef-tallow filled era before. So, while it's not hitting the spot as much as it used to, it looks like it's for the best.