Peanuts in McDonald's food!/ Cacahuete en McDonalds

I read on an allergy board here in Spain that there are peanuts in the breading for the McDonalds Nuggets and for McPollo, their chicken sandwich. Needless to say, I was shocked, since our peanut-allergic son has eaten the nuggets several times with no problem. I know that in the US this is not the case, and I could swear that I checked out the website here before letting him eat at McDonalds. Well, I went to the local McD's website, and unfortunately the application that had the nutrition info would not open on my computer. So, I made the trip to the actual McDonald's near us, and got a hard copy. According to the allergen chart they gave me, the McNuggets and the chicken are listed as !, which means that the allergen may be present and it is not possible to rule out its presence. So basically, it is a "may contain." The only "does contain" for peanuts, aside from the peanut topping, is the M&M McFlurry, and there are no other "may contains" except for the Casear salad with crispy chicken. The sheet was prepared in September 2009, so its possible that they have changed since I first found out about the allergy, but it is still sobering news. Needless to say, McNuggets are off our menu now. The sheet refers people to the website (different address) for updated info: www.mcdonaldsmenu.info. There you can check by country. The UK site, for example, does not list the chicken as a may contain. Now that I've checked, I see that on this site, the Spain information does not, either. So there is a discrepancy between the printed sheet and the website, but for now we'll play it safe. The website is dated 2006, so I'm thinking it's outdated...

Anyway, I thought readers would appreciate the heads up-- though hopefully you are more diligent about checking restaurant information than I was. Big oops.


Hace poco leí en un foro para alérgicos aquí en España que el pollo de McDonalds (nuggets y McPollo) lleva cachuetes en el rebozado. Me ha extrañado mucho, ya que creí haberlo comprobado (sé que en EEUU no lo lleva, pero claro, puede variar por país) y nuestro hijo alérgico ha comido los nuggets muchas veces sin problemas. Para resumir, fui a preguntar en el restaurante más cercano y me dieron una hoja con información nutricional, incluyendo los alérgenos, y sí que pone el pollo como posibles trazas. Los datos de esta hoja fueron actualizados en septiembre 2009, por lo que podría haber cambiado la composición del pollo desde que lo miré al enterarme de la alérgia. En la hoja remiten a otra página web (www.mcdonaldsmenu.info) para información más actualizada, y allí de hecho no pone el pollo como trazas de cacahuete, pero ya con la duda no vamos a arriesgarnos. La página web tiene fecha de 2006, así que los datos más recientes son los que ponen "trazas."