All Natural - or All a Gimmick?

Who doesn't love McDonald's fries?

We don't eat out at restaurants often, but every now and then - often, when we're traveling and looking for a quick bite (one we know our 3 year old will give the stamp of approval to), we pick McDonald's.

While Lew's go-to is always the chicken nuggets, for me, it's all about the fries. They're a true staple of the brand, and their taste is unmistakable - I've had a lot of amazing French fries in my life, but none of them taste exactly like the ones you get beneath the Golden Arches. And no matter which McDonald's you go to, they always taste EXACTLY the same. 

But why is that?

A little-known secret about McDonald's is that their French fries, for about 40 years, were fried in a blend of 93% beef tallow and 7% canola oil. The beef tallow is what gave the fries their unmistakable "meaty" flavor without actually containing any meat.

When the war on saturated animal fats was first declared, the beef tallow took a big hit, with one wealthy businessman going so far as to publish a series of advertisements proclaiming that McDonald's fries were to blame for his heart attack.

Eventually, in 1990, McDonald's replaced the beef tallow with vegetable oil - much to the dismay of its customers. Customers didn't like the taste of the new fry, which led McDonald's not to re-adopt the use of beef tallow in its fryers…but instead, to introduce "natural flavors" to the fry.

Which leads me into today's post: what does "natural flavor" mean, and why can you find it in just about everything you buy at a restaurant or from the supermarket shelves?

**J&R Pierce Family Farm is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to allow sites to earn advertising fees by linking to products on Amazon. I often link to Amazon when recommending certain products, and if you choose to purchase, I may earn a small percentage of the sale. It costs you nothing extra, and all recommended products are ones that I personally vouch for.**

What Does “Natural Flavor” Mean?

Take a closer look at the "natural flavor" used in McDonald's fries, and you'll learn that it's not so natural after all. The mixture used here is not derived from beef, despite being referred to as "natural beef flavoring," and is instead made from hydrolyzed wheat, hydrolyzed milk, amino acids, sugar, citric acid, and other additives.

McDonald's has caught a lot of flack for using natural flavor in its fries, but the reality is that just about every big business does. It's listed in everything from breakfast cereal to peanut butter to milk to plant-based meat to pasta. 

As for its definition, it's about as murky as the vats of oil McDonald's dips its baskets of fries into. The FDA says natural flavor is, "a substance extracted, distilled, or similarly derived from natural sources like plants (fruits, herbs, veggies, barks, roots, etc.) or animals (meat, dairy products, eggs, etc.) via a method of heating, with its primary function in food being flavoring not nutritional.”

That says a lot…without saying much at all.

Natural flavors are often used to replace their "real" counterparts because they offer a longer shelf life. 

Now, here's what people tend to get wrong about natural flavors. There's an immense fear over them because often, they contain things like solvents, chemicals, emulsifiers, and preservatives. 

They aren't inherently bad, though; people tend to get scared by the word "chemical" even though all matter (including our own bodies) is made up of chemicals.

They're also often confused with "artificial flavors," though the two are not synonymous. Artificial flavors are made solely from chemicals that are combined to mimic a flavor, while natural flavors include some part of the flavor they're mimicking. 

For example, strawberry natural flavor might contain some actual strawberry juice, while an artificial flavor would contain a blend of ingredients attempting to recreate that taste and smell. For it to be considered a "natural flavor," the original source must be an animal or plant, not a synthetic (manmade) chemical.

What Does “Natural” Mean?

This leads us to another common food label that's often misunderstood - "natural."

The FDA does not have a formal definition for the word "natural." However, in general, the "rule" is that nothing artificial or synthetic (including color additives) have been included or added to a food except for what might be normally expected. 

But "natural" doesn't exclude the use of pesticides. It doesn't address food processing or manufacturing. It doesn't indicate or underscore any nutritional benefit. Foods labeled "natural" can still contain natural flavors, sweeteners, and other plant-derived substances (like the French fries we talked about earlier). 

As a result, you might see "natural" used in a whole host of contexts, like "made with natural ingredients" or "100% natural." According to the USDA, dairy has the highest frequency of the label, with meat and protein, prepared meals, grains, fruits, and vegetables following shortly after.

The USDA does, fortunately, state that "natural," when applied to meat, poultry, and eggs, must not contain artificial ingredients or added colors. But it doesn't tell you anything about how the meat was raised or whether it was given things like hormones or antibiotics.

Unfortunately, "natural" means absolutely nothing. 

What to Keep in Mind

"Natural" does not mean organic, and remember - the only "organic" label you should really care about, if organic matters to you, is USDA-certified organic. 

There's no certification process for "natural." There's a lot of wiggle room here in terms of how food producers and marketers choose to use the term. Because of this, this is yet another food label where you'll want to exercise some critical thinking.

If you're buying a bundle of bananas and they're labeled with a sticker that says "natural," well…they probably are. There's not much we're going to add to bananas in the way of added flavors. But it doesn't mean they were grown without the use of pesticides, so don't get the two confused.

I get the best laughs when I walk down the grocery store aisles and see things like ground beef labeled as gluten-free, or a jar of peanut butter that says "may contain peanuts." 

We have to be discerning consumers, because sometimes, the hints that a product isn't all it's cracked up to be aren't as obvious as this. There's nothing inherently wrong with buying a box of cereal labeled "all natural," just like there's nothing wrong with buying organic (or non-organic, for that matter) raspberries. 

It's all about figuring out what your priorities are and understanding when food companies and retailers have your best interests at heart…versus when you're being duped.

The Takeaway

It's easy to listen to the headlines and fall victim to the latest fear mongering. It wasn't that long ago that we were told never to eat animal fats like beef tallow and lard - "they'll give you high cholesterol! You'll die from a heart attack!" Now, seed oils (canola, sunflower, grapeseed, vegetable, etc) are the whipping boy. 

We've done low carb. Keto. Atkins. Low fat. Sugar free. Intermittent fasting. 

It might seem strange for me to post about these kinds of “diet-related” topics as an ag writer, but the reality is that it's all intertwined. When we suddenly declare war on one food or food group, we isolate an entire population of farmers who grow those foods as their livelihood. 

And those wars are usually driven by initiatives from Big Business - not by actual science. Let's not forget that it was the sugar industry, in the 1960s, that encouraged scientists to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead (which led to several decades of low-fat diet fads and, likely, contributed to the sad loss of beef tallow in McDonald's fries. RIP). 

I'm not arguing that eating a pound of beef tallow is good for you, just like I'm not arguing eating a pound of sugar is. I'm just making the case for critical thinking. Currently, the trend is to eat low-carb, high-protein, and high-fat. For now. We'll see what 2035 brings. 

In the meantime, I'm personally not cutting out anything in my diet - but I'm definitely paying attention to the words and techniques companies use to sell their products, because it's important to know what you're being sold (and to make sure what you think you're getting is actually what you're getting).

We're wrapping up our series on food labels, and hopefully, these posts have been helpful in shedding some light on what goes on behind the scenes (and underneath that wrapper).

No food is bad - but there are certainly some bad actors at play when it comes to food marketing. Do your research and know what you're paying for!

(And sadly, the fries in this picture were not McDonald's fries - we were at Parc Safari. They weren't bad - but definitely not the same.)