Here's What McDonald's French Fries Contained In 1955 Vs 2025

If you found yourself transported 70 years in the past, what would be the first thing you would do? We suppose you would try to find a way back to the future (someone should make a movie about that). If you brought your phone with you, maybe you'd show some "Leave It To Beaver"-looking people TikTok brain rot just for kicks. But maybe time travel made you feel a little peckish, so why not stop by a McDonald's for a quick bite? The Big Mac wouldn't have been invented yet, but you can always get a regular burger and fries, right? Sure, but they'll be a little different compared to today — especially those fries.

In 1955, the original McDonald's French fries were made with just a half-dozen ingredients, including potatoes, salt, corn syrup, and a dash of sugar. For frying, McDonald's made use of a proprietary mix called "Formula 47," which was mostly beef tallow (which stops fries from being vegetarian) with some canola oil mixed in. Today's McDonald's fries are still made from potatoes and salt, but also with additives like dextrose and something called sodium acid pyrophosphate. (It's used to keep the fries a uniform color.) And as for the oil, no more beef tallow — today, their fries are prepared in plain old vegetable oil.

Believe it or not, McDonald's didn't originally sell French fries with their burgers. The very first McDonald's hamburger stand, opened by the McDonald brothers in 1948, sold potato chips as a side, along with orange juice. It didn't take long for fries and Coca-Cola to take their rightful place on the McDonald's menu. By the time an enterprising milkshake machine salesman named Ray Kroc bought the company and established the franchise model, fries and Coke were well-established sides for a hamburger (as well as the massive flop Hula Burger, a pineapple-based alternative Kroc pushed to get included on McDonald's menus).

So what happened to the beef tallow? In 1966, a wealthy construction supplies manufacturer named Phil Sokolof suffered a near-fatal heart attack, which he blamed on his diet of unhealthy fast food like McDonald's. Emboldened by his brush with death, Sokolof started a nonprofit called Heart Savers and began a crusade against McDonald's, demanding that the company use heart-healthy ingredients (or at least ones that were less harmful to the heart). It was an ad campaign that would change McDonald's French fries forever, as the company replaced beef tallow with vegetable oil, making it marginally less damaging to cardiovascular health. Hooray for incremental progress!