Tanisha Martin, Blanca Velez
Professor Amarekwa, English 096-Group E
Why the Fries taste Good “It’s big and it’s real, it aint bullshit” the statement made by John Richard Simplot during an interview about his simplots plant. Growing up on a small farm in Idaho he felt the need to venture out on his own, he moved away by the young age of fifteen and began to work at a potato warehouse. By time he reached the age sixteen he became a potato farmer, he began to work with his landlord sorting potatoes with an electric potato sorter that they both purchased, John was able to win the electric sorter on a coin toss against his landlord were he than began to open his own potato factory operating thirty warehouses in Oregon. In 1965 he met with a man named Ray Kroc one of the founders of McDonalds and sold him his frozen French fries. Today Simplot’s Company is one of the three leading competing distributors. “French Fries,” their unique taste does not stem from the type of potato that McDonalds buy, but by the technology that processes them, as well as, the restaurant equipment that fries them. The taste is determined by the cooking oil, which consists of, 7% cottonseed oil and 93%, Beef Tallow which contains more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald’s hamburger. In 1990 McDonalds was ordered to switch to pure vegetable oil, presenting the company with an enormous challenge, how to make the fries taste like beef without cooling them in beef tallow? To solve that problem with a mysterious phrase “Natural Flavors” also known as “Artificial Flavors.” They are man made additives that gives food their flavors by blending scores of different chemicals in small amounts. The flavor industries consist of five chemical plants in New Jersey. The area produces two thirds of flavor additives sold in the United States. Flavor is the smell of gasses being released by chemicals that you’ve put in your mouth. The Food and Drug Administration