A new addition to fast food McDonald’s menus, vegetable fries appear to be a healthier alternative to potato fries. In reality, they are far from being the least caloric. We explain to you!
Since March 7, fast food customers McDonald’s France have a choice between classic potato fries and vegetable fries when ordering their side dish for their favorite burger. These colorful fries, which are an assortment of 3 vegetables of French origin, replace the famous potatoes on a temporary basis. Mixing chunks of fried beets, carrots and parsnips, these McDonald’s Vegetable Fries appear to be healthier and nutritionally better than the classic fries from our Best Of or Mc First Menus. If you are on a diet or watching your diet, you may therefore be tempted to prefer them to those of potatoes. But be careful, do not choose them for the wrong reason because they are not the healthiest fries.
Far from being less caloric than ordinary McDonald’s fries, they even turn out higher in calories than potato fries. Showing a total of 313 calories per serving, versus 289 calories for potato fries, they also contain more fat (including more saturated fat), are saltier and contain less protein than the others as can be seen by comparing their nutritional value, available on the McDonald’s app. Their only real health benefit is that vegetable fries are higher in fiber, which is good for bowel movement.
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Why are McDonald’s vegetable fries fattier than potato fries?
Although they are vegetables, these new fries are no less from frying which is inherently quite greasy. It is precisely because of this cooking method and the very nature of the vegetable pieces that the finished product – our famous portion of vegetable fries – is enriched in fat compared to traditional fries. To fully understand this, we can rely on a biology teacher who revealed the explanation for this phenomenon on his TikTok account. As the young woman reveals, the potato is a starch rich in starch (the main component of flour) unlike the other fried vegetables at McDonald’s.
“When you put flour in water, it doesn’t mix, the same when you put flour in oil” she recalls, citing the hydrophobicity of starch to explain why potatoes don’t absorb much oil as they cook into French fries. “However, when you fry vegetables, there is a lot of oil that is absorbed by the vegetables” she continues. What therefore makes vegetable fries more caloric is this amount of oil absorbed during cooking by the pieces of beetroot, carrot and parsnip.
As you will have understood, if you choose vegetable fries during your next visit to fast food, it is therefore not to lose weight but for their taste interest with their taste which changes from potato.