USA McDonald's fries have 14 ingredients. UK McDonald's fries have 4

OMG - the UK version is full of RAPE. Or seeds of rape. I’m confused…

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We have huge fields of rape!

Some people are allergic to it, oddly.

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She’s not a credible source of information that merits posting in the first place. Nothing to rebut, no more so than I’d need to “rebut” the prognostications of a Magic 8 Ball - both could be right by accident, but neither deserves any presumptive benefit of the doubt since neither have track records of being accurate.

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Hmm, it sounds like you are saying that when a liar happens to tell the truth, that true thing is a lie.

Again, I ask you to show me that this ingredient list is incorrect, so that I can amend the post and thank you for providing me with the correct information.

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If Silly Putty were toxic, would it still be on the shelves at Toys ’Я’ Us? The children’s toy industry is extremely sensitive about that sort of thing.

However, what exactly is an antifoaming agent doing in there? Does the oil get frothy otherwise?

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That’s pretty lazy.

No, rather when a known liar says something there is no sound reason to presume what they say is true.

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Lazy is quoting a known scientifically illiterate alarmist and presuming her claims to be true. It’s hard to come up with a better example of journalistic laziness than that, except, perhaps, defending it.

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Here you go, you silly person Ingredients list

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I think the point is that citing her adds nothing to the argument. Even if she’s correct, she’s not a credible source. If the point of citation is to provide a credible foundation for an argument, citing a non-credible source at best does nothing to advance the argument. Citing a non-credible source with a credible-sounding name (“Oh, she’s the Food Babe! She must know what she’s talking about or she wouldn’t be famous with a name like that!”) only muddies things further.

As a thought experiment, imagine that instead of the name “The Food Babe,” the post used “Steve the Liar.” It doesn’t affect the actual truthfulness (or lack thereof) of the list, but if you saw that name, you’d sure feel like you had to do an additional check on the facts, wouldn’t you?

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I don’t have one for this issue yet, but we’ll get plenty of people saying why she’s wrong soon enough. Here’s the last mass-hysteria issue she brought up with the Subway “yoga mat chemical” crapfest of unscientific proportions:

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-yoga-mat-hysteria/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/03/06/286886095/almost-500-foods-contain-the-yoga-mat-compound-should-we-care-keep
(going to link this wiki page for the outbound links and references): http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/FoodBabe

She is known to be unscientific, unrelentingly chemophobic, and equates because something is in X, if it’s in Y it’s also bad, and a horrible scaremonger.

As to the differences between the listings, the US has stricter labeling laws, and at the same time we allow for more preservatives (which are needed to move more food across the larger country). Also, to rebuke her idiotic “why do we need an anti-foaming agent in the oil”: Frying things even in a restaurant scale is a really dangerous thing, if there’s even a little excess water on a big batch of fries and the fry cook drops it in, it will flare up and foam all over the place. That foam can either ignite or significantly burn the cook. So I want these anti-foaming agents, as I actually care about food handlers, and I try to make sure their jobs are as safe as possible. She only gives a crap about pushing her agenda and getting advert clicks on her website.

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Ow, ow, McDonald’s bad website hurt my eyes!

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People’s concern is not that Food Babe’s chart is inaccurate, but that Food Babe in general is inaccurate (and kind of odious). She pushes some wonky ideas about food and science. Her most frequently cited, most popular, and most visible posts have been torn apart by nearly every interested party. They’re quite often baldly false, and almost always deliberately misrepresent the facts or are based in really foolish misunderstandings on her part. I think in general I, and many others in the world, would prefer not to see her linked or promoted anywhere. If you wanted a list of ingredients for the fries to post you can get that from McDonald’s. As your previous post showed they aren’t hiding these things. And if I had to guess that’s where Vani Hari got them from. Using a link from here for the sake of posting the two ingredient lists just throws a lot of traffic her way, and promotes her likely to be inaccurate information about food.

I mean this is a person who tried to demonize beer by pointing to Isinglass (an entirely natural product that’s been used in beer for centuries) and the glycol used in keg lines as scary industrial evils that are killing us.

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Polydimethylsiloxane is used as an anti-gas additive in some formulations of antacid\anti-diarrhea medications. I don’t see the big deal.

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Right, because it is “silly” not to credulously accept the claims of a scientifically illiterate professional alarmist.

Thanks for the link, but as another poster noted, we don’t know if the reporting rules the same in the UK, nor any of a number of details. Nor does the link prove this Food Babe FUD that you cited:

Again, FUD Babe’s shtick is “Scary sounding chemicals!!! 1!11”

Obligatory:

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I want to discuss whether or not the list ingredient of ingredients that Food Babe posted is correct. You want to discuss something else, which is boring to me.

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The ingredient list from the US McDonald’s site doesn’t line up with the list presented in this post: http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/product_nutrition.snackssides.6050.small-french-fries.html

For what it’s worth, there are studies showing that asparagine* is a potential carcinogen created by cooking potatoes (no chemical additives needed because everything is made up from chemicals). If we live in fear of food, we’ll all starve to death.

*Easy to read link: http://www.potatogrower.com/2014/01/simplot-touts-benefits-of-gmo

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Why is it canola on one side and rapeseed on the other?

Those are the same oil.

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We’re saying that sole-sourcing information may not be the best idea. I’m willing to discuss if her list is correct as well, is there a second source?

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