READ this thread once through but can't find the fact that McDonald's have very recently had to admit that there are fifteen (or was it seventeen?) ingredients in their 'fries' AS WELL AS potatoes and (one) cooking oil. McDonalds have set about playing this down by mounting a youth-friendly video campaign in which a boy-ish trustworthy-looking actor pretends to be candidly answering answering an innocent FAQ (on the viewers behalf!) by going through the list of 'fries' ingredients as though the company had disclosed them out of stupendous generosity. The video ends with the actor saying something like: 'So that's it! You keep firing the questions at me, and I'll keep digging-out the answers for you'. It's quite consummately done. The main script goes something like this, listing the ingredients in turn: 'Ultra-noxious-mineral-manipulate'? - that's just another name for flavouring! You want flavour in your fries, right; 'Chemicalicalised-mutation-inoganic-super-poxic'? Why, that's just an entirely natural something we need to keep your fries fresh! You want your McDonald's fries fresh don't you?. . . and so on. It cleverly diverts away from all fair and real concerns, like, for example, why on earth there are actually seventeen ingredients in what is probably - with the exception of a raw carrot - the world's simplest food; a food which I think we all take for granted as involving no more than chipped potatoes and oil. Perhaps the number of chemicals involved is what we should have expected all along from this company. However what I was not prepared for - and, perhaps, not just because I am vegetarian - is that meat could be involved. But, yep, beef extract is one of the ingredients (That one's for flavour! We know you want your fries tasty!, or some such line). I don't often eat (eat?) at McDonalds, but I don't avoid fast-food joints on principle. Before their introduction of veggie-burgers I just had chips; suddenly veggie-burger and chips seem a viable - if not satisfying - option. But we now see the deception that's been going on over all the years: one food line is specifically sold as not containing meat, while another, that (most unexpectedly) does contain meat is not actually suitable for vegetarians! Overlook my personal dietary whims, but consider those who have religious constrictions on what they eat being duped by this chain, with as I think we all know by now chance of apology or comeback. [Fresh edit] APOLOGIES, FOLk - I was cross-directed to (what I now discover I failed to notice was just the third page of) this thread by search, and therefore hadn't read the earlier postings when I read it. Sorry for the repetitions
