French Fries are my favorite food group.  My momma must have weaned me off the bottle and on to fries as an itty bitty boy because I can't remember a time when they weren't part of my life.  Put a little ketchup on them and oh how righteous they are. 

As a little boy, we used to go down to the corner of North Avenue and Spring Street, sit in the car and along with our dogs, rings, and FOs enjoy the best fries on the planet, courtesy of The Varsity, the worlds largest drive-in,  and if we were lucky, Flossy Mae would be our car hop.

They still have great fries but up until 20 years ago or so, they used to cook those babies in lard or something.  When they showed up to the car they'd be doing the backstroke in a big puddle of grease. I can tell you, there is no substitute for whatever they used to use in their fryers.

Unfortunately, through the years, they (whoever the nutrition Nazis are, often referred to as "they") discovered, lard, or whatever it was, clogs the arteries, and should be removed from our lives.  They decided Americans were not responsible enough to take care of themselves so they began pushing for more healthy cooking products.  And even the Varsity, affectionately known to Atlantans, Southerners and Georgia Tech students as "The Greasy V," succumbed to this health craze and shifted to less unhealthy grease.  I checked and today, they use canola oil.

They probably didn't use lard, but something like peanut oil or vegetable oil, but ohh, it was so good.   

People who know and love The Varsity always laughed at this movement toward less unhealthy food because not once in their lives did they ever go there to have a healthy meal.

Now the fact that I now have a high deductible health plan, a health savings account, exercise regularly, eat more of the foods that are good for me, less of the foods that are bad for me, and less quantities of pretty much everything, does not change my position on the best fries on earth.  The only difference is that three years ago, if I went to The Varsity (or anyplace that served fries-which was a few times a week at worst) I would order the biggest mess of fries I could.  Now, I eat fries about once a month and try to eat a smaller quantity.

So where is all this going??  Advertising and the Wall Street Journal, that's where.  Huh?  You see I saw this ad placed by Cargill, who is sort of in the food technologies business, that talked about how they had created a zero grams of trans fat per serving oil which didn't change the taste of French fries.  Now this is all well and good, although I am highly skeptical that any substitute for whatever it was they cooked those fries in at The Varsity could ever replicate the taste.

Sometimes I wonder in amazement at the money spent on technology and research to do things like take the fat out of food.  Face it; if a guy eats a bucket of fries every day cooked in oil with zero grams of fat, he's still going to end up being a ticking time bomb of health disaster. Do you suppose if the same money were spent educating people about nutrition and health we might be able to enjoy "the real thing" when came to fries and our other indulgences from time to time, and not have to worry about our arteries being backed up like rush hour traffic on The George Washington Bridge?  You might, but I don't think "they" ever would.