McDonald’s recently had its famous French fries in news for the weirdest of reasons. A study by Biomaterials noted that a chemical found in the fries was used by researchers at a Japanese University to grow hair on mice.
Thanks to some news articles, the report soon created rumors that the fries would cure baldness in human beings. Before you ditch your hair cream for junk food, let’s find out the truth.
As per the McD site, their French fries contain the following ingredients: potatoes, vegetable oil, natural beef flavor, dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate and salt. Apart from these, in small font at the end of the page, the company says that it uses “vegetable oil blend with citric acid added as a processing aid and dimethylpolysiloxane to reduce oil splatter when cooking.”
Drugs.com states that this chemical is otherwise used in cosmetic and hygiene products such as make-up, sunscreen and deodorants as a conditioning agent. Though the chemical is believed to be carcinogenic under high temperature or excess intake, FDA has not yet declared it as dangerous.
Coming back to hair growth, dimethylpolysiloxane is the same chemical that was used by the Japanese researchers to experiment on mice. The face of the matter is that even the researchers have so far not been able to infer that the chemical spurs hair growth. They have stated that more studies are required for conclusive results.
So before you recommend French fries to your bald friend next time, remember this article. I’m lovin’ it anyways, even without any cure!