McDonald's French fries, marketed as World Famous Fries in America,[1] are a French fries product at McDonald's restaurants. Introduced in 1949, the French fries were cooked in a mixture of 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil.[2][3] In the 1950s, CEO and founder Ray Kroc established quality control measures for McDonald's suppliers, ensuring potatoes maintained a solids content within the optimal range of twenty to twenty-three percent.[4] Kroc also pioneered the practice of "curing" the potatoes to convert sugars to starch, thus achieving consistently crisp French fries. This process involved storing potatoes at medium-high temperatures for several weeks.[4] Additionally, he introduced the "potato computer," developed by Louis Martino, to calculate the precise cooking time for fries, based on the fluctuation of oil temperature during frying.[4] Kroc preferred to use potatoes from Idaho, but these were seasonal. Food scientists Edwin Traisman and Ken Strong developed a process of quick frying sliced potatoes to remove moisture before freezing them, which was patented in 1962. This allowed McDonald's fries to be consistent year-round.[5][6] Subsequently, in 1967, Kroc made a handshake agreement with J. R. Simplot to have his Simplot company supply them with frozen fries, replacing fresh-cut potatoes.[7] In the late 1980s, Phil Sokolof, a millionaire businessman who had suffered a heart attack at the age of 43, took out full-page newspaper ads in New York, Chicago, and other large cities accusing McDonald's menu of being a threat to American health, and asking them to stop using beef tallow to cook their French fries.[8] After this sustained campaign, including by the National Heart Savers Association against saturated fats and the beef tallow they were using,[9][10][11] in 1990, they switched to vegetable oil with beef flavouring.[12][2] However, vegetable oils at that time were hydrogenated (to make them semi-solid and retard spoilage) which also creates trans-fats, whose metabolic dangers were not then widely known. McDonald's has not disclosed whether its beef flavoring contains meat, but it is known to contain milk byproducts.[13] In 2002, McDonald's paid US$10 million to settle lawsuits that accused the chain of mislabeling its French fries as vegetarian.[14] The "thin style" French fries have been popularized worldwide in large part by McDonald's and, to a lesser extent, Burger King.[15] In 2008, McDonald's ceased using trans fats in both US and Canadian markets.[12] In 2013, McDonald's Canada introduced poutine nationwide, after having it in Quebec for 10 years.[16] As part of McDonald's 2014 U.S. "Our Food. Your Questions." transparency campaign, the company released a behind-the-scenes video (featuring former MythBusters co-host Grant Imahara) explaining how its U.S. fries are made.[17][18][19]