Fries (French and American)

If what they say is true, if it is easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven, just imagine if that rich man brought enough french fries for everyone. Logic denotes, if we cannot bring earthly possessions along to the afterlife (such a premise is likely, so we'll run with it for now) why not sell your gold, your cars and property, and invest (moments before dying, of course) in a large pile of potatoes, an industry deep fryer, and lots of salt. One does not buy their way into heaven, but armed with greasy, salty, deep fried starch wedges, if you are denied entry, odds are that's not an afterlife you'd wanna be a part of. Not to mention the fact that all the ketchup is in hell. (Ketchup is evil, pure and simple. Which is why I love it.)

What does 1000 french fries look like? How many potatoes meet their demise in hot oil to arrive at that total, and what would be the cost, commercially or in the privacy of your own home? And if I were to eat 1000 fries a day, how long before I explode, smile intact?

The number of fries contained in a single potato varies, the end figure dependent upon a number of variables, including the size of the initial potato, the size of the wedges the potato is diced into, and the prevalence of chiggers infecting said potato (most discerning adults would simply throw out the complete potato, chiggers and all, but there aren't as many discerning adults currently employed by four of the top five fast food franchises currently operating in this country). A brief study was done, combining the results of ten anonymous households operating on the condition of anonymity, and the average was fifteen (15) individual fries per potato (if cut in the French style, long and slender) and twenty-seven (27) potato cubes if cut in the American style.

If making french fries, you need approximately 67 potatoes to make quota. At the cost of approximately $4.90 per sack of potatoes, at approximately 13 potatoes per sack, you would need about 15 sacks, or $73.50. On the other hand, American fries would only require about 37 potatoes, or about 3 and 1/2 sacks, rounded up, for a cost of $19.60.

A typical deep fryer, like the one you have in the kitchen, next to the George Foreman grill, behind the blend, and in front of the rice cooker you never use, can hold approximately 65 fries at a single time (per volume.) 1000 French fries would ready to serve in between 15 to 16 individual turnovers. Given that it takes 4-5 minutes to cook the potatoes to the golden brown we're accustomed to seeing, it would take about an hour and fifteen minutes to cook the entire lot. If we were using an industrial size deep fryer, productivity would increase exponentially. Those can hold 500 fries per turnover, cooking them in about a minute and half. That's 1000 fries in only three minutes, and every last one is piping hot to the touch. It would be unlikely to think that all 1000 fries could be eaten by one person while all 1000 are piping hot, mostly because we let the first few handfuls cool in our hands. by the time those are edible, the rest are cold as a heart of pure darkness.

American fries are prepared slightly different, and through the following examples, it works as a parable for the inefficiency of American culture. Instead of deep frying, these are grilled in a skillet, taking up more time, space and energy. It takes about 10 minutes to fry 50 potato cubes, meaning 20 total turnovers, at the staggering time expenditure of three hours and twenty minutes for 1000 American fries. Even at the industrial level, where 150 cubes can be grilled at the same time, it adds to time, space and energy. These cubes would take 25 minutes to approach the color and temperature we're used to, and while it only takes about 6 and 1/2 turnovers, this is a time cost of nearly two hours and forty-five minutes.

If we're pursuing all 1000 fries commercially, the cost of the individual potatoes, the oil to place them in or the heated stove surface upon which to cook them, all vanishes. It should be common knowledge amongst most of you that a small order of fries off the local dollar menu contains approximately 32 fries, meaning on would only need to purchase about 32 orders and one would easily exceed the 1000 fry requirement. That cost of which would be, pre-tax, only $32. There are other sizes of fries, but beyond the small order, the number of fries per order tends to be less a rational number, more its drug-fiending, knife-wielding, street-preaching irrational counterpart. And, with inflation, the cost of the larger orders of fries is inversely proportionate to the number of additional fries in the purchase.

Finally we come to the most disturbing figure of today's experiment, the toll on my health if I actually ate all 1000 fries each day. A single order of fries can contain 400 to 500 calories, so we'll split the difference and say 450 calories for every 32 fries. 1000 fries would be 14,062.5 calories as my daily bread. This is approximately the minimum amount of calories needed in week to maintain one's body mass. If I'm ingesting a week's worth of calories a day, that means every four days I have experienced enough caloric intake to cover the entire month, and every month and a half, I've eaten the same number of calories a normal person with a healthy diet eats in a year.

This last figure is speculative at best, as after 12 days on the 1000 fries a day diet, I would explode and be sent to the afterlife neither rich, nor a camel.