McDonald's stopped using beef tallow in 1900.
In 1990, faced with Sokolof's campaign and growing public concerns about health, McDonald's gave in.
Beef tallow was eliminated from the famous french fry formula and replaced with 100% vegetable oil.
At this time McDonald's in the US did use beef tallow in its fries but replaced it with vegetable oil in the 1990s.
It does however use "natural beef flavor" in the oil blend that the fries are cooked in before being frozen and shipped to stores around the nation.
It became prevalent in McDonald's fries in 1990, when the company switched from beef tallow to vegetable oil in an attempt to lower the amount of saturated fat in its food.
In the good old days, McDonald's fries were cooked in beef tallow.
But customer demand for less saturated fat prompted a switch to vegetable oil in the early '90s.
Here, that means oils of varying saturation's combined into something reminiscent of beef tallow.
Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton fat, primarily made up of triglycerides.
In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat.
In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, including its melting point.
Beef tallow is the rendered fat from a cow that's used for cooking, typically, but it also plays a role in making soap and candles.
While it's not an ingredient in high demand today, beef tallow historically was used for cooking pemmican, a Native American staple of beef tallow, dried meat, and dried berries.