Wendy's unveils natural-cut fries made with sea salt

Tuesday, November 16, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Wendy's, french fries, health news

---

(NaturalNews) If you ever ask yourself whether all of us in the natural health community are really making a difference, look no further than today's astonishing news: the Wendy's fast food chain has announced new "natural-cut" French fries made with sea salt. What makes them "natural-cut?" They still have potato skins!

In a weird way, this is sort of a step in the right direction, although I'm not sure yet that I trust this new product. Based on the research I've done, the term "sea salt" is technically meaningless, as any salt can be called sea salt since it all came from the sea sometime in Earth's history. That doesn't mean it's full-spectrum salt that's rich in minerals.

"Processed salt" is to full-spectrum salt what processed white sugar is to real sugar cane crystals. I don't yet know whether Wendy's is using legitimate full-spectrum sea salt or just some processed white salt that they're calling "sea salt," so it's hard to tell whether this is a good thing. (Most likely, a Wendy's P.R. person will respond to this article with some sort of answer on this, so we'll see where that goes...)

The natural-cut fries, on the other hand, are definitely a move in the right direction. Potato skins are definitely on the "healthy" side of things, and I'd much rather eat fries with skins on them than fries from potatoes that have been peeled. Then again, I don't eat fast food fries in the first place. Starches cooked at extremely high temperatures form acrylamides (http://naturalnews.com/acrylamides.html).

Are Wendy's customers really interested in healthy food?

These new "natural-cut" fries are part of Wendy's new effort to make food using what they call "real" food ingredients.

Which brings up the obvious question: What have they been using until now, anyway? Non-real ingredients? And what are all the other fast food restaurants using -- artificial ingredients? (You already know the answer to that question...)

"We want every ingredient to be a simple ingredient, to be one you can pronounce and one your grandmother would recognize in her pantry," said Chief Marketing Officer Ken Calwell, in a NYDailyNews.com report (http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/...).

It's a commendable intention. Let's see how far Wendy's can actually take this idea of "natural" fast food.

About this effort, on one hand I have to give Wendy's kudos for daring to take a step into the world of somewhat real food. But on the other hand, it's still a fried starch, and that's not very good for your health. Then again, I'm not sure that Wendy's customers are actually looking for healthy food options.

When you think "healthy food," you don't normally think about going to a fast food burger restaurant chain. Perhaps Wendy's is planning on changing all that and rolling out organic beef burgers with whole-grain buns and salads with no MSG in the dressing. Will they also stop serving diet soft drinks laced with aspartame? I very much doubt it.

It really all comes down to what customers will buy. If customers will buy poison, fast food restaurants will keep serving up poison. Do not think that any large corporation is going to purposely reduce its own earnings just to improve the health of its customers. That very idea is completely incompatible with the priorities of the corporate world.

At the same time, there probably is room in the fast food industry for at least one nationwide company that serves food made from real ingredients. In Arizona, there's a chain of fast food Mexican restaurants called La Salsa that actually comes pretty close to this. I've been known to eat there myself from time to time. They use fresh ingredients and make their own salsa in-house.