FAT-WHYME

The French Fry: Weapon of Mass Destruction?

The Americans have their French fries, the British have their chips, Latin America has their fries and the French have their pommes frites.

We love. The pope, who's most popular vegetable everywhere and forever, is cut into strips and fried. Fast food chains have managed to create total consistency so that fries at a McDonald's in Kalamazoo are identical to those offered in San Francisco, Atlanta, Moscow and Madrid. They are the ultimate finger food, easily consumed behind the wheel, standing on the subway or walking down the street. Some of us choose to add tomato sauce, or vinegar, or salsa, but also taste great as they are.

The civilized world has a huge addiction to the humble tuber. It is difficult ever conceive of eating, which took place before the potatoes were brought back to Europe from the New World and became a staple of the cuisine of each country. What did the poor eat before potatoes made their appearance? Pan? Grains? Vegetables?

The arrival of the potato has changed our diet forever. Is easy to grow, abundant and cheap. The flavor is mild, marrying well with almost everything that we choose to eat with him. The texture changes depending on how they prepared. And how many have invented ways to cut, cook, and use it with every meal imaginable!

We baked in their skin or baked into small pieces. We boiled whole or creamy mashed into a puree. I grated and fried for breakfast. We made soup of it and made it a key ingredient in stews. We made her pancakes. It slices, riced, it, and dice. We put it on bread, wrapped in dough, and created America's favorite snack, the potato chip.

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

French fries now make up 25% intake of vegetables our children. Fast food nutritionists attempted to substitute healthier alternatives that were removed without cause by a majority of its customers. Potatoes continue to be the accompaniment of choice for all fast food: hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, fish, steak, and ribs. Simply I can not get enough, never, never seems to tire of crunching pleasure.

The innocuous potato, relatively low in calories and packaging of its share just vitamins and minerals, has been transformed into a culinary weapon of mass destruction. Disfigured by saturated fat in calories and artery-hardening horror, French fry may be the most lethal threat we face daily.

Only a few orders of fries a week can increase our weight ten pounds a year! More than a decade, which is one hundred pounds, during a lifetime, an impressive figure. With 60% of us overweight, half of that number actually obese, we must look to our dietary intake to find the cause. Like diabetes and other weight-related conditions mushroom, which we know in our hearts that changes lifestyle are necessary.

Come on dieting, drink liquid meals, fast, cut out sauces, and have the stomach with staples. We join gyms, buy home exercise equipment, and continue with the fitness shows on television. We blame the food additives, hormones in our meat and fat in our salad dressings. We left the carbohydrates and sugars that our bodies can not process and opt for high fiber breads and low fat milk.

We refuse to believe, I do not want to believe that a seemingly harmless, well clear little food can pack a lethal blow.

"But I just nibble a few, "they lament," And not every day. "It's not only food intake leading to an explosion. It is the cumulative total, day after day, year after year, that plants the time bomb within our system. Is the additive effect of repeated use eventually reaches critical mass and our physiology implodes.

Imagine, if you will, that a cold was sold or consumed over a year, anywhere in the United States. With only that change alone, the collective national weight loss could exceed one million pounds!

The poor father is not prepared to act as a deadly weapon. It offers us enjoyment and variety and taste and health. But we took his goodness honest and slow distorted into a murderer. With every bend of our elbow to pop its sweet flavor our mouths, we lay down fat in the hips, stomach, arteries, and our pancreas.

Let's save and save the pope. As much as we like to admit, The French fry is something that has to go before us.

About the Author

Dr. Bola is a psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic, specializing in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. She is the author of a psychology-based workbook for permanent weight control. Reach her at: http://www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html