Can a Chemical Used in McDonald's French Fries Be the Elusive Cure for Baldness?

In just a few short weeks so far, 2018 has already been a huge year for fast food french fry news. Consider that Taco Bell started offering nacho fries, and the fast-food-taco-loving public, previously deprived of adequate potato side dishes, lost its mind. And now that it appears McDonald's french fries may indeed be the baldness cure the world has always desperately longed for — well, it's probably time to super size that s---.

OK, it’s not quite like that, and the hair-loss remedy is not likely to be achieved through an order at the fast food window. (Sorry, drive-through fans like Kylie Jenner.)

But consider this news: According to a new study by a stem cell research team from Japan's Yokohama National University, a chemical used within McDonald’s fries known as dimethylpolysiloxane has been shown to regrow hair on mice.

The method, according to the study released in the Biomaterials journal and cited in ScienceDaily, is actually quite "simple" and early testing indicates a good chance it could be successful when attempted on humans, too. The new study demonstrated how the researchers successfully mass-produced what are known as “hair follicle germs.” Those are the cells behind hair follicle development, and are considered the “holy grail in hair-loss research,” according to a summary in Newsweek.

Along with a lot of scientific language you may not be as interested in, the study’s Junji Fukuda summed it up this way, which is what you really want to know: “It worked very well.... This simple method is very robust and promising. We hope that this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss."

OK, 2018: What other epic fry-related bombshells ya got? Come at us.