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I would like to share the story of my quest for gluten free fast food French
Fries -- perhaps someone on the list will have other ideas for me, or someone
will benefit.

French Fries are my seven year old Celiac sons favorite treat.  Although my
whole family is vegetarian and we buy organic foods, we trotted down to
McDonalds several times a week with the kids to get their French Fries.

After being diagnosed with CD and going on a gluten free diet, Adams
digestion did not immediately improve and we began looking for sources of
hidden gluten.  We read the newsletters of six different Celiac groups and
found many sources of hidden gluten.  Several mentioned the dangers of gluten
cross contamination, and one (Celiac Action Line, an excellent newsletter by
Mike Jones, who is one of our listowners) gave fast food chain French Fries
as an example.

We talked to the manager at our local McDonalds.  The ingredients of their
French Fries say nothing about wheat, oats, barley or rye.  They have four
fryers.  Only French Fries are fried in two fryers.  The other two fry both
French Fries and hash brown potatoes.  The potatoes contain wheat flour.  The
manager said there is no way to guarantee that on a particular day, the fries
we eat were fried in oil that had never been used for hash browns.

I went into other fast food chains and at all of them, it was actually worse
than McDonalds in that they _always_ shared frying oil between French Fries
and products with gluten, such as breaded chicken, onion rings or burittos.
I was running out of hope.

Finally I found out that at Burger King, the situation is better **but not
perfect**.  After discussions with two local store managers and the head of
their national food systems, this is my understanding:

There are two separate sets of fryers at Burger King, and they operate at
different temperatures and on different timing cycles.  I think they also
have different ingredients, but I am hazy on this point (no lard in the
French Fry oil). By corporate policy, only French Fries in the first set of
fryers and all other fried products in the other set.  The head of food
systems said that it should be impossible for cross-contamination.  He said
that if a breaded product was put in the French Fry fryer it would not cook
properly because the temperature and timing cycles were not suitable (and
visa versa for the French Fries).  The oils are not mixed at night.
Different areas of the restaurant are used for the fries and other products.
The frying baskets are of the same design, but are scrubbed down every night
and there is no opportunity for them to be switched during the day.

Despite his assurances, I still quiz the manager on duty every time I risk my
sons intestinal lining on their food.  While on vacation in Sante Fe the
local manager told me that when they get a large order for onion rings, they
will occasionally use the French Fry fryer!  I called back the head of
national systems at Burger King and he was so upset at this prohibited
practice that he sent the regional representative to that store the very same
day to complain.

Theoretically, my wife and I could assure Adams GF diet by personally
preparing every scrap of food he eats from scratch.  Practically this is
impossible and so we take a bit of a chance.  We have gotten to know the
local manager of one Burger King, had the national office speak to him about
the dangers of gluten for Celiacs, and we ask every time we go there if there
has been any problems (such as a broken down fryer).  It is alot of work, but
all of you on this conference probably have similar stories.

By the way, the current issue of the Canadian Celiac Association newsletter
said that McDonalds of Canada has reformulated the ingredients in their hash
browns to substitute corn for wheat.  So in Canada, the French Fries sound
like they should soon be gluten free.  I mailed a copy of the newsletter to
the corporate headquarters of McDonalds in the US and received a reply that
it is *impossible* for gluten to be transferred in the frying process in a
form which is dangerous to Celiacs, and that they had no intention of
switching their ingredients.  I think they are dead wrong on this issue!  As
Don Kasarda said, you can never be _completely_ sure that a particular
symptom can be traced to a particular food.  However, my sons digestive
problems stopped completely within days of stopping McDonalds (and other
non-GF) French Fries.

Bill Elkus