The French Fry: Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Americans have their French fries, the British have their chips,
Latin America has its papas fritas, and the French have their
pommes-frites.

We love them. The potato, that most ubiquitous and perennially
popular vegetable, is simply sliced into strips and deep fried.
The fast food chains have managed to create total consistency so
that fries at a McDonalds in Kalamazoo are identical with those
offered in San Francisco, Atlanta, Moscow, or Madrid. They are
the ultimate finger food, easily consumed behind the wheel,
standing in the subway, or walking down the street. Some of us
choose to add ketchup, or vinegar, or salsa, but they also taste
great just as they are.

The civilized world has a giant addiction to the lowly tuber. It
is hard to conceive of the centuries of eating that took place
before potatoes were brought back to Europe from the New World
and became a staple of every country’s cuisine. What did the
poor eat before potatoes made their appearance? Bread? Grains?
Vegetables?

The advent of the potato changed our diets forever. It was easy
to grow, plentiful, and cheap. The flavor was mild, marrying
well with almost anything we chose to eat with it. Its texture
changed depending upon how it was prepared. And how many ways we
invented to cut it, cook it, and use it with every meal
imaginable!

We baked it in its skin or roasted it in bite-sized pieces. We
boiled it whole or mashed it into a creamy mush. We grated it
and fried it for breakfast. We made soup of it and made it a key
ingredient in stews. We made pancakes out of it. We sliced it,
riced, it, and diced it. We put it into bread, rolled it into
dough, and created America’s favorite snack, the potato chip.

But the masterpiece that captured us all was deep frying it.
Thick, country-style chips, shoe strings, curly and spicy -we
loved them all: golden and crisp and perfect.

French fries now make up 25% of our children’s intake of
vegetables. Fast food nutritionists attempted to substitute
healthier alternatives which were peremptorily dismissed by the
majority of their customers. Fries remain the accompaniment of
choice for all fast food: burgers, hot dogs, chicken, fish,
roast beef, and ribs. We simply cannot get enough and never,
ever, seem to tire of the little crunches of pleasure.

The innocuous potato, relatively low in calories and packing its
fair share of vitamins and minerals, has been transformed into a
culinary weapon of mass destruction. Disfigured by saturated fat
into a caloric and artery-hardening horror, the French fry may
be the deadliest peril we face on a daily basis.

Just a few orders of fries a week can increase our weight by ten
pounds a year! Over a decade, that’s a hundred pounds, over a
lifetime, an awe-inspiring figure. With 60% of us overweight,
half of that figure actually obese, we must look to our dietary
intake to find the cause. As diabetes and other weight-related
conditions mushroom, we know in our hearts that lifestyle
changes are needed.

We go on diet regimens, drink liquid meals, fast, cut out
sauces, and have our stomachs stapled. We join gyms, buy home
exercise equipment, and follow along with television fitness
shows. We blame the additives in our food, the hormones in our
meat, and the fat in our salad dressings. We forsake the
carbohydrates and sugars that our bodies can’t process and opt
for high fiber breads and low fat milk.

We refuse to believe, because we don’t want to believe, that a
seemingly harmless, crisp little addition to our meal can pack
such a lethal wallop.

“But I just nibble a few,” you wail, “And not every day.” It’s
not the single meal intake that leads to an explosion. It’s the
cumulative total, day after day, year after year, that plants
the time bomb within our system. It is the additive effect of
repetitive use that eventually reaches critical mass and our
physiology implodes.

Imagine, if you will, that not one fry was sold or eaten over
the course of a year, anywhere in the United States. With just
that change alone, the collective national weight loss could
exceed a billion pounds!

The poor potato is ill-equipped to perform as a deadly weapon.
It offers us enjoyment and variety and taste and health. But we
have taken its honest goodness and distorted it into a slow
killer. With every bend of our elbow to pop its sweet flavor
into our mouths, we lay down fat on our hips, our stomachs, our
arteries, and our pancreas.

Let’s save ourselves and save the potato. Much as we hate to
admit it, the French fry is something that has to go, before we
do.

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