I dated someone who was unfortunate enough to drop a wet towel into the deep fat fryer at a Burger King many years ago. She was severely burned by the gusher of hot oil and steam hitting her uniform top. Someone was well-versed enough in first aid to know to remove the garment immediately, but she had permanent scarring on her breasts as a result, and all from a minimum-wage job.
So, anti-foaming agents in oil are very important to the fast food industry, where few may have the training to handle the emergency, or recognize the danger in cleaning around a deep fat fryer with a damp towel.
While Iâm very sorry to hear about that, Iâm not convinced an anti-foaming agent would have saved her from an eruption. Just because the oil has a surfactant in it doesnât mean that water steam explosions in the hot oil wouldnât necessarily happen.
I completely agree that the addition of a strong non-toxic surfactant definitely reduces the risk of employees getting burned, but the oil does splatter for other reasons and the franchises are still lazy and greedy not to spend any time on safety training. Hot oil is dangerous no matter what you add to it to mitigate it boiling over.
But yes, I agree that very small amounts of such non-toxic surfactants are important in such jobs as fast food.
One fairly small point on the ingredients list: The north American âCanolaâ is just a different label for âRapeseedâ. Itâs the plant that covers the English landscape with yellow flowers in May and early June.
With the Food Babe reputation, I wonder what might have been missed. And some of the difference in the count seems to be the vegetable oils used in the restaurants, unspecified in the UK. That isnât a huge problem (and the blend could vary with pricing differences). We seem to have a difference between a US source that was supported by McDonalds and an unknown original source for the UK list. It looks to match the McDonalds web page, but that doesnât show any E-number.
Citric Acid would be referenced at E330, if it were used, Dimethylpolysiloxane is apparently E900, and is used as an anti-foaming agent for cooking oils in the UK. Not using such numbers in the UK list is suspicious, at an âEek! The chemicals!â level.
A quick check shows E900 to be a commonplace additive to cooking oils in the EU, which contradicts the Food Babe claims. Can we trust that list of UK ingredients?
Interesting, thanks! I was confused because Walkerâs Ready Salted Crisps say on the packet that they have âsalt from Cheshireâ, and I knew that Cheshire has salt mines.
On looking up British Saltâs operation, it looks like that is still rock salt not sea salt, just extracted as brine rather than by mining. Warmingham is a significant distance from the sea, and in the same area as the salt mines.
On the McDonaldâs UK website, at least, this list does indeed match the list provided by the Food Babe.
This has been pretty extensively discussed already (I know, itâs a long thread)⌠The big question that remains unanswered is - does the UK require that restaurants list additives in cooking oils? I canât find any answer on it. What has been discussed earlier in the thread, though, is that Dimethylpolysiloxane may in fact not be used in the UK McDonaldâs restaurants, for ease of regulatory inspection (I believe, I canât recall from way back in the thread).
Oooh, interesting right back atcha! And I admit to being wrong and you right about rock salt!
I briefly considered the idea that they might do that, then thought ânaah, why would they do something so roundabout?â Maybe itâs easier to get the 10% contaminants out of rock salt, than it is to get all the mercury and other pollution out of sea-brine? Or perhaps with rock salt, you can get a much thicker brine, which dries our much faster.
Either way, in researching this, and with your reply, we can now claim to know far more than we ever needed to about UK salt production! I find this somehow satisfying.
[Hrm⌠I wonder if itâs not the iodine enrichment, but rather some other difference with rock salt, that my wife reacts to. Not likely, though: she reacts to other high-iodine things, so Iâm pretty sure thatâs the problem.]
Iâve been unable to source anything as well, but I did find that the Five Guys UK site lists their Fries ingredients as:
FRIES
Five Guys Style: Potatoes, Refined Peanut Oil, Salt
Peanut Oil: Peanut Oil with Citric Acid added as a preservative and Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an
anti-foaming agent
