Leith, William (10 page)

And suddenly: 'Look, there's not much left.'

And: 'They'll notice.'

And: 'Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.' And: 'What's the point of putting half a bottle of wine back in the fridge?'

And: 'Hell, let's just get it over with.'

And: `I'll make a new start tomorrow.'

And: `I'll do something about this.'

And: 'I really will.'

And: 'I'm feeling sick.'

And: 'I'm feeling woozy.'

And: 'I'm feeling wired.'

And: 'What have I done?'

And: 'What's the matter with me?'

And: 'Fuck!'

And: 'Is there anything else to drink in the fridge?'

obese, angles towards me, and we collide, two big trucks touching bumpers, and both of my stomach magazines, which I'm carrying under my arm, slip downwards a notch, and I try to pin them to my jacket with my elbow, but it's hopeless, the angle is too great my stomach is too big and the stomach magazines spill to the floor, falling with a sharp cracking noise on the McDonald's tiles.

LOSE YOUR GUT

SHRINK YOUR GUT

GET HER TO AGREE TO ANYTHING

But the obese man isn't looking. He is in his own private world of unwrapping, of removing the outer, inedible paper layer of what looks like a Big Mac. He is two or three seconds away from smelling the fumes, no more than five seconds away from mouthfeel. His salivary glands are already producing a cocktail of enzymes to break down the first bolted bolus of cross-sectional Big Mac the pure beef patty, the salt, the sugar, the E282 calcium propionate, the E331 trisodium citrate, the wheat flour baked to perfection, with an unchallenging crumb structure and a soft, yielding crust. In three minutes he will be licking his fingers; in four he will want to eat them.

Myself, I'm moving towards the counter with an automatic, jerky gait, the stomach magazines now safely rolled up and stuffed in my pocket, and when I arrive at the counter there are two people in front of me, one a classic Big Mac, fries, large Coke, the other wanting a cheeseburger with fries, but nothing to drink, and, an aeon later, I look at the guy behind the counter, a youngster in a cheerful apron, and I say `fries', and I say 'large', and I hand over the money, and theguy in the cheerful apron gives me change, and he turns around to get my fries.

Fries are the most popular food in America and Britain. In America, 25 per cent of all vegetables eaten are fries. As a foodstuff, fries are miraculous. Is any food more addictive? With a Glycaemic index of 75, almost nothing, apart from sugar itself, raises your blood sugar so fast. Fries are strips of starch covered on all six sides with fat; they are like bread that has been buttered on both sides, and around the crusts as well. (With fries, of course, there are no crusts; by the time a potato has become fries, the skin is long gone.)

Fries are made from potatoes with a medium or high starch content, such as Mans Pipers or Pentland Dells or Idaho Russets. The potatoes are stored in vast warehouses, under strict temperature, light, and humidity conditions, during which time some of the starch in the potatoes turns to sugar. This is why, when you fry them, they turn a lovely golden-brown colour. This colour, according to nutritional scientists, is one of the most desirable food colours on the planet. Fries are strips of starchy tuber which have been fried twice, a process which forces a great deal of the water out of the tuber and replaces it with fat. According to food critic Jeffrey Steingarten, the perfect French fry has deep, even universal, cultural resonance, 'like the fear of snakes'.

I take the box of fries. The fries are standing up in the box, like a golden-brown skyline.

The air is filled with static. I am huge; the fries look tiny. And I think: who did this to me?

It All Started with French Fries

I could blame the unnamed French, or possibly Belgian, chef who first discovered the process of double-frying potatoes in the 1890s. I could blame the American soldiers who returned from the trenches in 1918 and caused the spread of fries in America in the 1920s, asking their wives to cook French fries and creating a market for deep-fat fryers. I could blame Henry Ford, who popularised the automobile, facilitating the great suburban sprawl of the 1940s and 1950s, and therefore the roadside diners that became America's original fast-food outlets. The proprietors of these early fast-food outlets sold beef patties and hot dogs and fries, and quickly realised that fries were the most profitable item. It was the profit from fries that allowed these entrepreneurs to expand their businesses, to open more outlets, to sell yet more fries.

I could blame the McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac, who opened a fast-food diner in San Bernadino, California, in the early 1950s. San Bernadino was the epitome of suburban sprawl, and stood at the end of the transcontinental Route 66. Dick and Mac McDonald had an inspired idea: one day, they got rid of everything on their menu that would require the use of a knife and fork. The business boomed. People drove for miles for their hamburgers and fries and milkshakes. They sold so many milkshakes that, in 1954, they ordered six Prince Castle Multi-Mixer machines, enabling them to mix forty-eight milkshakes simultaneously.

I think I definitely should blame Ray Kroc. In 1954, Kroc was a 52-year-old travelling salesman who worked for the Prince Castle company that made the Multi-Mixer machines. Kroc,originally from Chicago, was a heavyset man who had spent his life looking for a big break. He had an insatiable appetite for success; the trouble was, he had never had much of it. Kroc had spent years driving across the country selling paper cups, and now he was doing the same thing with milkshake machines. He was a storyteller, a joker. He was friendly and optimistic. Most of all, he was driven by a primordial hunger: he always wanted more. He once said, 'I expect money like you walk into a room and turn on a light switch or a faucet.' He called himself 'the agitator, the motivator, the never-satisfied type of guy'.

When Dick and Mac McDonald ordered six milkshake machines, a light came on in Kroc's head. He sensed that anybody who needed to mix forty-eight milkshakes at the same time must be on to something big. What was going on? Kroc drove to San Bernadino to investigate, and found his answer under the golden arches. Watching from his car, he saw people driving to the original McDonald's restaurant, and then waiting in line for Dick and Mac's burgers, fries, and shakes. The lines were long, and stayed long all day. Kroc made the McDonald brothers an offer: he wanted to buy their name and their methods. He visualised a chain of fast-food restaurants, all the same as each other; he visualised long lines of people that stayed long all day.

After some initial misgivings, Dick and Mac sold up. And Kroc built an empire an empire based, you might say, on fries. Fries were Kroc's most profitable item. He called McDonald's fries 'the greatest French fries in the world'. It was Kroc who perfected the method of curing potatoes in a warehouse, so that some of the starch in the tubers would turn into sugar. According to the great science writer Mal—

colm Gladwell, he hired men to visit his suppliers and check each batch of potatoes with hydrometers, to ensure the potatoes contained exactly the right amount of water. He hired a former Motorola engineer named Louis Martino to develop a formula for cooking perfect fries. 'The French fry,' Kroc once wrote, 'would become almost sacrosanct for me, its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously.'

Or I could blame Harry Sonneborn, Kroc's business partner, a former Tastee Freez executive, who invented a system that enabled McDonald's to expand fast. Sonneborn realised that McDonald's could open almost endless outlets if they leased them to franchisees and charged a rental fee based on profits. Kroc flew around the country in a light aircraft, looking at the spread of highways, predicting sites of future suburban sprawl. Then he bought land. His empire, based on fries, grew exponentially. Now, somewhere in the world, an average of two McDonald's outlets opens each day.

As well as founding his own empire, Kroc also cleared the way for other franchise-based empires and, in the end, a whole franchise-fuelled economy. Whenever you walk into an outlet that is part of a chain a Starbucks, a Burger King, a Taco Bell, a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a Wendy's you should understand one thing above all. It all started with French fries.

Idaho. At first, he bought pigs, shot wild horses in the desert, fed his pigs on horse meat, and sold the fattened pigs at a profit. By the time he was in his twenties, he leased 160 acres of potato fields; before he was out of his twenties, he was the largest shipper of potatoes in the West. Later, he also grew onions, and made a vast profit selling dehydrated onion powder to the army during World War Two.

After the war, Simplot became interested in the possibilities of home freezing. He hired a team of chemists to research the concept of frozen potatoes. The big discovery was that French fries, which need to be cooked twice, could be frozen between the first cooking and the second. This, Simplot realised, would revolutionise the fast-food business. Fries no longer needed to be fully prepared on site; they could be frozen, stored on site and reheated according to demand.

In 1965, Simplot went into business with Ray Kroc. At the time, Kroc franchised around 725 restaurants in America. Ten years later, the number was 3,000. Like Kroc, Simplot was hungry for more. 'I'm just an old farmer got some luck,' he told Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation. 'The only thing I did smart, and just remember this 99 per cent of people would have sold out when they got their first 25 or 30 million. I didn't sell out. I just hung on.'

Wallerstein Was Right I Just Hung On'

And I could blame David Wallerstein, the great mastermind

And I could blame J. R. Simplot, the greatest potato baron in of supersizing. Wallerstein, a McDonald's executive in the

the history of the world. Born in 1909, Simplot grew up in 1970s, had managed movie theatres in the 1960s, and discovered that he could increase his profits by offering people bigger servings of popcorn. As John F. Lore points out in his 1985 book, McDonald's: Behind the Arches, nobody wanted to buy two small tubs. But when big tubs were available lots of people chose them. His discovery would be backed up by research conducted at Penn State University in 2001: when volunteers were fed larger portions of food, they ate larger amounts, regardless of the levels of their hunger. When you see more fries, you want more fries. And after you eat more fries, your blood sugar crashes, and you really do feel more hungry. Then, of course, you want yet more fries.

At first, Ray Kroc was not convinced by Wallerstein. 'If people want more fries,' he said, 'they can buy two bags.'

`But Ray,' Wallerstein said, 'they don't want to eat two bags they don't want to look like a glutton.'

In the end, Kroc capitulated. Profits soared. Fries made more money than ever. Portions grew and grew. In 1955, a serving of McDonald's fries weighed 2.4 oz and contained 210 calories. Now it weighs 4.3 oz and contains 610 calories.

Wallerstein was right.

People Know What They Like

Who else could I blame? Recently I went to interview a man who had masterminded several advertising campaigns for McCain fries and microwave fries fries which have been pre-cooked and whose packet-to-mouth time is three minutes. Understandably, the man didn't want to be named: he knew there was a chance I might say something bad about

fries. But he needn't have worried saying something bad about fries is like saying something bad about slim, leggy models in women's magazines. It won't make a blind bit of difference. People know what they like.

We were sitting in a slick, bright conference room. The man told me about the campaigns he had participated in. As he talked, I imagined his face pixilated to anonymity. The ads were brilliant and daring. In one, a young girl asks herself what she would choose Daddy or chips. In another, a couple are depicted on a sofa, stealing fries from each other's plates. In a third, black guys force handfuls of fries into their mouths. That's more or less it black guys gorging on fries. It's wonderful. In a fourth, an attractive man is, somehow, forced to choose between fries and a gorgeous girl.

The advertising executive told me that, according to research, fries are the biggest cause of arguments in restaurants. Couples in restaurants argue more about stolen fries than about their partner ogling members of the opposite sex. 'The thing about fries,' said the man, 'is they taste better if they're not yours. You have to steal them off someone's plate.'

The Fries They Ate Yesterday and the Fries They Will Eat Tomorrow

Imagine yourself taking a box of McDonald's fries in your left hand, and picking out a fry, or maybe two or three or four, with the thumb and index and middle fingers of your right. You don't hold them for very long, do you? How long before they're in your mouth? Two seconds? Three? And you don't

spend much time thinking about where they come from, do you? But these fries have been on a long journey. Chances are they have been processed by McCain, the world's largest producer of fries. McCain make fries for McDonald's, as well as other fast-food outlets, caterers, and supermarkets.

Should I blame McCain? One out of every three fries worldwide has been through a McCain factory. I visited the McCain factory in Scarborough, North Yorkshire but it could have been anywhere; the process is identical wherever you go. The factory is a vast Satanic building, like a huge aircraft hangar bedecked with turrets and chimneys. It steams. On an average day, 1,200 tons of potatoes arrive at one end of the factory, and fries a mind-boggling amount of them emerge, packed and boxed, at the other.

Ernie Thompson, a potato man of twenty-four years' standing, told me he was in charge of the liaison between McCain and McDonald's. What, I wondered, was the hardest thing about the job? 'Keeping your weight down,' he said. But Ernie is lucky. He is tall and slim, and finds time to exercise a great deal. Donning a hairnet, a white coat, and a protective hard hat, and telling me to do the same, Thompson took me on a tour of the factory.