French Fries, Fly Away

This is not going to be a popular post. Riding shotgun on french fries is like cursing out mom and apple pie. They are maybe the most beloved finger food in the nation. They're also an addictive, sonambulant combination: crispy, burnished golden with fat, piquant with savory salt and ohhhh, those stomach relaxing, soothing, softly collapsing potato carbs that melt away the memory of your diet and the notion of fullness. You can never have just one french fry to taste. Hell and damn! You can't have one medium sized package of french fries and feel full. Like all sumptuous non nutritional foods, the more you eat, the hungrier you become. You can't eat enough of the fat, salt and carbs like you can't get enough lovin'.

And that's why you've probably put on weight these last few years. If you just ate the medium french fries it wouldn't be so bad (Of course, you're eating other food with it and it's not salad.). But a large and a medium fries or two large ones like I used to order after they stopped supersizing? No. Of course, the guys can handle two large fries easily along with two huge hamburgers with the bun, cheese, sauce and everything else. But if you plan to get into those GAP 26 size jeans, you better rethink the fries.

Calorie Count lists the nutritional value and calories of medium sized fries from our favorites: Burger King is a D+ nutritional value with 360 calories. Dairy Queen is C- at 380 calories; McDonald's is a C with 380 calories. With the large fries up the calories 100 for Dairy Queen and for McDonald's their large fries is 500.. But who cares? After two bites, you've become unconscious and you keep on eating and eating until you decide to order another one.

In NYC, Mayor Bloomberg doesn't want fat, unconscious New Yorkers. If I walk into McDonald's craving fries, I think twice about it after looking up at the order sign where the calories are posted underneath the prices. Scary, consciousness shocking information. Many a New Yorkers has changed the order after looking up for the price and seeing the calories instead, though they are listed in tiny print and I must squint to see the numbers.

So I'm off french fries now, probably forever, thank you Mayor Bloomberg. The carbs raise my blood sugar and make me gain weight easily. And I have nooooo power to eat just one french fry and no stamina to eat a medium fries then work out in two hot yoga classes and run the treadmill  till I drop. I just won't eat them and I'll be OK with it. Of course, it took me a few years to break the habit.

If you can't fly away like I did, then there are happy substitutes, I suppose, though I always felt if I couldn't get the real thing, junk it. So I've fled altogether, even from this somewhat healthy way of enjoying potatoes.  Now, if Bloomberg can change the city ordinances to outlaw fried foods as toxic and dangerous, he would be doing all of us New Yorkers a favor. But he will never be able to get that law passed; he wouldn't dare institute such "food fascism."   Fried foods are "Da Bomb."