On June 16, 2026, fast food chain McDonald's announced the comeback of a classic dessert in celebration of America's 250th birthday: the fried apple pie, returning June 23. The company replaced the fried apple pie with a baked version in 1992.
In the days that followed, social media users alleged the restaurant chain's apple pies contained the ingredient L-cysteine, an amino acid workers
For example, on June 17, an X user posted (archived) that McDonald's customers who eat the company's apple pies "are eating human hair." The user said McDonald's U.S. customer service confirmed to a pro-veganism group the company derives the L-cysteine in the apple pies from "hog hair, human hair or poultry feathers." The post ended noting McDonald's locations in the U.K. supposedly stopped serving food with the human hair-extracted form of the ingredient.
Snopes did not locate definitive evidence to confirm or debunk this claim. We emailed McDonald's corporate representatives to ask for answers about the rumor and will update this article if we receive further details.
In our research, we found the McDonald's website lists for both the baked and fried apple pie products the ingredient specifically as "L-cysteine (dough Conditioner)," displayed under "allergen information." The
As the X user wrote, the Vegetarian Resource Group
Regarding the U.K., a McDonald's web page pertaining to Great Britain locations (mcdonalds.com/gb) said, "We can confirm that if L-Cysteine is used in any of our food it will not be derived from hair or animal origin." We found no similar message on
We emailed the Vegetarian Resource Group to ask several questions and to request to review any records potentially saved from past communications with McDonald's. In response, Jeanne Yacoubou, a research director with the organization, said the 2025 call with the McDonald's customer service representative occurred but did not provide any documentation. Yacoubou added, "I suspect that the UK/US difference is related to legal labeling differences as well as consumer expectation differences."
What is L-cysteine?
The National Library of Medicine website published a study defining L-cysteine as a protein-creating amino acid — semi-essential in humans — found in animals and humans, primarily in hair, nails and skin, with applications in the pharmaceutical, food, animal feed and cosmetic industries.
The study's research describes the most common production method for L-cysteine as follows:
Animal feathers and human hair are natural sources of L-cysteine, which is the main component of keratin. First, cystine is extracted with activated charcoal after the acidic hydrolysis of feathers and hair. After desorption from the activated charcoal matrix, the isolated and purified L-cystine is then transformed into L-cysteine via electrolytic reduction.
A Department of Agriculture review mentions L-cysteine's uses in food processing and handling, including the same "dough conditioner" application McDonald's specifies on the company's website.
We emailed the USDA to ask if the government keeps track of the percentage of human hair-derived L-cysteine compared to other sources and will add information to this story accordingly.
U.S. consumers can find L-cysteine listed as an ingredient in a variety of foods — for example, bread, pizzas and tortillas. Some popular U.S. grocery stores selling their own apple pies feature L-cysteine on ingredients lists, while others don't mention it.
L-cysteine's sources and China's role
According to newspaper archives and news media outlets, researchers derive L-cysteine from human and animal sources, for example duck feathers, hog hair, human hair and pig bristles.
In years past, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph (archived), BBC News and South China Morning Post reported about an industry in China that makes L-cysteine after extracting the amino acid from the hair of the country's people.
A 2014 article (archived) in a North Carolina-based newspaper read, "While some L-cysteine is directly synthesized in laboratories, most of it is extracted from cheap protein sources such as human hair, which usually comes from women in China who sell it for extra income."
A 2018 paper from the journal Food Chemistry, available on ScienceDirect.com, provided further insight, with researchers reporting workers extract the majority of L-cysteine from animals, not humans:
The majority of l-cysteine is obtained industrially by hydrolysis of animal materials, such as poultry feathers. Despite widespread belief, there is little evidence that human hair is used as a source material and its use is explicitly banned in the European Union (2000/63/EC decision).
The European Union's website hosts a report from 2000 with information about the banning of human hair-derived L-cysteine. Page 47 says, "L-cysteine hydrochloride or hydrochloride monohydrate. Human hair may not be used as a source for this substance."
For further reading, we previously reported about other McDonald's rumors, including a claim the company planned to charge a $1 fee for customers using the drive-thru, as well as an alleged image of a chained McDonald's worker preparing food.