Yup - I think it was that article that taught my ten year old you can get tired of spherified food but it takes a big effort. 
Personally, I think American McDonaldâs fries create more jobs than the UK version, so thatâs gotta be good, right?
As for US actual ingredients, this is from McDonaldâs own nutrition page:
FRENCH FRIES:Ingredients:
Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (Canola Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean
Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [Wheat and Milk Derivatives]*, Citric Acid[Preservative]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (Maintain Color), Salt.Prepared
in Vegetable Oil: Canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated
Soybean Oil with TBHQ and Citric Acid added to preserve freshness.Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK.*Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients
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What can I say? I aim to please 
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The oil our suppliers use to partially fry our World Famous Fries has a natural beef flavoring, which also contains hydrolyzed milk as a starting ingredient, added to enhance the taste.
http://www.mcdonalds.com/usmobile/en/your_questions/our_food/are-your-fries-vegetarian-friendly.html
âBeef flavoringâ and hydrolyzed milk arenât normally found in vegetable oil, so I donât understand how they donât count as ingredients.
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But if you look at all those ingredients in the UK McD veggie patty, theyâre all actual plant material, except the salt, water, and xanthan gum (which is a fermented sugar.) Itâs even vegan, unlike some veggie burgers that have milk or egg binders in them. Wish the US McDâs would carry veggie burgers, though thereâs a lot less point since I canât eat the fries. (Iâm not vegan, so Iâll eat breakfast at McDâs occasionally; they make better biscuits than I do, and have drive-through coffee.)
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Theyâve never apologized, either. They gave some blood money to Hindu organizations and maintained the line âMcDonaldâs says it never said that the French fries sold in the United States were vegetarian.â
(Never mind that more than one different franchiseeâs stores in my area offered âvegetarianâ grilled cheese and fries on their boards)
I think theyâre counted as a sub-ingredient because theyâre part of the âvegetable oilâ concoction that is sprayed onto the fries when theyâre being prepared in the factory. I donât have a problem counting them (and all sub-ingredients) as separate ingredients, but if you do that then you have to do the same with the UK recipe.
Wow, I thought it must have been some other âFrauenfelderâ who posted this until I went back to look. The defence of the ingredient list is pretty weak when the Boing Boing post mentions the ingredient is used in Silly Putty. That seems irrelevant to me without some reason for mentioning it.
Then the quoted portion of the link straight out says the US McDonalds is feeding itâs customers Silly Putty. Pure scaremongering without any facts to back it up.
Even if the ingredient list is 100% true, I have never seen something like this from Boing Boing. Well, maybe in one of the hyperbolic, panicky headlines, but not in the body of the post. =o)
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Hey, some of us are really annoyed about Isinglass; it may be a natural product but I donât want dead fish bits in my beer (Iâm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, not health reasons.)
Especially annoying that Guinness uses it!
And yeah, it does actually matter - it means that if Iâm ever back in the UK, I can eat McDâs french fries (because thereâs no beef fat in them), and the comments here say they also have a veggie burger (which US McDâs doesnât, but Burger King does, though I usually prefer Five Guysâ grilled veggie sandwich.)
To me the name always sounded like âOil you got out of a canââŚ
No, that is NOT the question. A better question is why does some site list 14 for US and 4 for UK. The simplest reason is⌠reporting standards are different and the list of ingredients reflects that. Some ânatural and artificialâ flavors are not required to be reported in the UK, some are not required to be reported in the US. If an ingredient is created by processing a food, but not actually added to the food, itâs likely to not be reported (much like the carcinogens created through the Maillard reaction are not required to be reported in the ingredients list).
Reporting rules also differ greatly based on the amount of an ingredient in a food. If it is under some PPM, it doesnât need to be listed.
The fact that the number of ingredients in a food is somehow an indication of badness makes this entire thing extremely anti-science.
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Apparently thereâs an EU regulation that requires isinglass for clarifying stouts, and itâs used almost across the board by the big name UK imports.
BUTâŚthe Guinness Extra Stout (bottles) brewed in Canada (by Labatt) doesnât use isinglass!
Edited to clarify: Extra Stout isnât the same as the Guinness Draught that is sold on tap and in the bottles with the widgets
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Frauenfelder, you might be bored by discussing Food Babeâs credibility, but it matters. A lot. BB is a respected news source with a ton off readers. Uncritically putting someone like Vani out there as a resource for information about food science is lazy, irresponsible, and dangerous. Sorry it bores you, but grown-ups have to do boring things sometimes.
If you donât grasp this I will have to reconsider reading and recommending Boing Boing in the future.
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Chipotle was never, ever owned by McDonaldâs; this is a complete myth perpetuated because people donât know the difference between an investment stake and ownership. The McDonaldâs corporation was Chipotleâs biggest outside investor in 1998, but sold off all of itâs investment share as of 2006. (See the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipotle_Mexican_Grill for more details (before you lambast me for using wiki for this, note itâs well referenced and you can follow those references (not going to link blast right now))). Since at least then (a time I frequented Chipotle) it seemed there was no visible influence from the McDonaldâs corporation, and now it definitely seems there isnât any.
With Boston Market, McDâs Corp did buy them. They were about to go under and McDâs saved them. At the same time they divested themselves from the Chipotle investment, they sold it off to a capital firm.
McDâs never had anything to do with Godfatherâs Pizza, I think youâre thinking of Donatoâs Pizza. This was an attempt to enter the pizza market, and they sold it off in 2003.
If you wish to boycott a company and presumed subsidiaries, make sure you know that they are subsidiaries of said company and their relationships.
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They should go back to using beef tallow like the old days. Itâs a delicious natural fat.
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But also a strict vegetarian shouldnât be eating at any fast food joint. All oil is contaminated at almost any fast food joint-- they fry chicken and other meats in the same oil that they fry the fries in, so anyone whoâs a strict vegetarian cannot eat there anyway. This is for McDonaldâs and most fast food places worldwide.
The pumpkin spice items not having pumpkin in it reminds me of people whoâd buy caramel apple dip and then complain that there was no apple in the dip. âItâs for dipping the apples into you dips!â was always my reaction.
Just donât get me started about baby oil. Flagrant false advertising. 
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What you didnât know it was for deep frying babies? MMMM, deep fried babies
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