It Took 10 Years to Get Low-Fat Fries

What's that about fast food workers being paid a living wage? Burger King is hard at work on other, more pressing matters, mainly, creating a lower-calorie french fry. On Tuesday, the company unveiled the newest development in health food: 40 percent less-fat, 30 percent fewer-calorie "Satisfries."

See how they did that? It's called a pun.

The Daily Beast's Daniel Gross explains:

How does this work? It’s a matter of engineering. You may think of French fries as a simple matter of potatoes meeting fat at high temperatures. But there’s an intervening force in many French fries, especially those that are produced on an industrial scale: a coating, a batter that can add or lock in flavor. And the innovation here, which took 10 years of research and development on two continents, is in the batter. There’s something about the makeup of the batter that ensures the potatoes absorb less oil even while producing the desired crispy/fluffy contrast between outside and inside.

Yup, that's right, this feat of engineering took 10 years of research. If there's one thing we all know about eating healthy, it's that the most nutritious foods take 10 years to develop in a lab. But what about that dehydrated potato taste? Gross reports:

I tasted the crinkle-cut fries. And then I tasted them again. Not wanting to be rude to my hosts, I finished the small box in front of me, and then sampled a few more as I took notes. The fries taste good. They’re crispy. They taste potato-ish, like good fast food fries should.

Mmm...potato-ish.