NY Times May 20, 2001
For Hindus and Vegetarians, Surprise in McDonald's Fries
As an observant Hindu, Brij Sharma considers cows sacred. He believes the gentle creatures are helpmates to human beings, and it would be as unthinkable for him to eat beef as it would for a cowboy in Montana to eat his own horse.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Sharma, an electrical engineer for Boeing in Seattle, says that for years he never set foot in a McDonald's restaurant. But in 1990, when the fast-food chain announced with great fanfare that it was switching from beef fat to "100 percent vegetable oil" to cook its French fries, Mr. Sharma joined the legions of Hindu Americans and vegetarians who began venturing into McDonald's to nibble what they believed were vegetarian fries. Mr. Sharma's teenage son even took a job at McDonald's last year, and drawn by the generous employee discount, the Sharma family consumed countless bags of fries.
So Mr. Sharma said he was horrified when he opened his India West newspaper in April and read, "Where's the Beef? It's in Your French Fries." He and other American Hindus were outraged to learn that McDonald's French fries are seasoned in the factory with beef flavoring before they are sent to the restaurants to be cooked in vegetable oil.
Now Mr. Sharma is one of three plaintiffs representing the Hindus and vegetarians of America in a lawsuit filed on May 1 in Seattle that accuses McDonald's of deliberately misleading its American customers.
"I feel sick in the morning every day, like I want to vomit," Mr. Sharma said in a recent interview. "Now it is always there in my mind that I have done this sin."
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