Leith, William

by The Hungry Years

  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 bi
gger 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.

  It was extraordinary. I had never seen so many potatoes. On one side of me was a mountain of potatoes. Underneath me was a river of potatoes. Standing on a metal walkway, I followed the potatoes' progress through the factory. They flow into shiny cylindrical tanks that rotate while the skins are blasted off with steam. Then they are shot through `hydro-guns', forced by pressurised water through metal pipes at a speed of over 100 feet per second. At the end ofeach pipe is a grid of blades. This is the point where one potato becomes ten or more McDonald's fries.

  Next, the river of potatoes becomes a waterfall of fries, a Niagara of what potato men call 'strips'. It is awesome. The strips are whizzed along on a holed conveyor, to ensure that small ones fall through, into the vast nether world below, the Hades of failed fries, fries that didn't make the grade. Making the grade, Thompson told me, is the crucial thing. Consistency is everything. People who eat fries want the fries they eat today to be exactly the same as the fries they ate yesterday and the fries they will eat tomorrow.

  The fries flow past mounted cameras, which photograph any blemishes that might remain; in a breathtaking feat of technology, blades are programmed to pop up and slice off the blemishes. People want their fries to have cosmetic surgery.

  When you're standing on a thin metal walkway at the top of a vast factory building, skidding on fat deposits, and looking down into a swimming-pool-sized vat of boiling fat, you understand what people put themselves through to arrive at the perfect serving of fries. You have plugs in your ears to protect you from the noise. `It's a very complex job,' Thompson told me. 'People think that making frozen fries is the easiest thing in the world. But it's not.' Later, the fries are tasted by a panel, some of whom are thin, and some of whom are not. One taster stands still, pushing golden fries into his mouth, small bright eyes darting around his large, pasty face. He is concentrating. He is the size of a black bear. He nods, satisfied, and picks up the next batch. It's thanks to him that the fries taste so good.

  I could blame the advertising guy. I could blame Thompson. I could blame the man with the large, pasty face. I could blame the team of food scientists who devised the formula for the cooking oil. When I take a McDonald's French fry, and put it in my mouth, I could blame anybody, at any stage of the process I could blame the employees, or contractors, who have grown it, harvested it, trucked it, mechanically peeled it, skinned it, trimmed it, brushed it, blanched it, dried it, fried it, de-fatted it, cooled it, frozen it, bagged it, boxed it, X-rayed the box for foreign bodies such as coins or pens, trucked it to one of several distribution plants, from where it is trucked again to the car park or street by the golden arches in your home town wherever you live in the world, to be refried and sold by youngsters in cheerful aprons.

  Have a Nice Day

  The youngster in the cheerful apron says, 'Have a nice day.'

  I take the box of fries. I nod at the youngster. I execute a swift turn. I push the thumb and first two fingers of my right hand into the box of fries, which are hot but not too hot. I am huge; the fries look tiny. I pick out a fry, and then another, and a third, and a fourth. I push the fries into my mouth. I exit the building.

  The fries in my mouth taste of salt and fat and starch: they taste delicious, I could eat three or four boxes, they taste of my past, of the person I was when I ate fries and doughnuts and bagels and all the other things that made me hungry.

  In what feels like a moment of madness, I walk ten feet anddump the fries in a bin, and, reeling, confused, I chew my mouthful of fries and I feel the grim tug of dread, and I actually wonder if I should walk back to the bin and pick my fries out, but I don't.

  I walk on. I don't know what I'm doing. A torrent of emotion is passing through me, and I'm trying to dam the torrent with a single mouthful of fries, and before long, the mouthful is gone, and I am left with nothing.

  Nothing, that is, except the prospect of being slim.

  'I Recommend that You See a Psychiatrist'

  I'm trying to remember what it was like to be slim, trying
to imagine myself as I was in my early thirties, and, before that, in my early twenties, and I can't fix on the exact feeling, or sensation, of slimness. When I was slim, I didn't eat so much. When I was slim, I was more active. My clothes looked better. Sometimes I had a steady girlfriend; when I did not, I found myself driven by an urge to flirt with women. A relentless, nagging urge. At times I became promiscuous, gorging on sexual encounters in the same way that I had gorged on fries and hamburgers and peanut butter. I was voracious, I was carnal.

  I remember one particular day. I was in my early twenties. I was a student. I weighed 185 lbs. Waist size: 30. I was having a drink with a friend. The week before, I had had sex with a girl at a party, in the bathroom, and left the party alone, and a couple of days later I had met another girl at another party and slept with her in her hall of residence, and a couple of

  days after that I had met the first girl in a bar and spent a night with her, and psychologically, of course, I was a mess, a total mess, and I had a date with another girl the next day. If you'd asked me what I really wanted, I would have said that I was hungry, hungry for flesh. I don't think I fully understood that what I really wanted was not flesh, but something more complex and elusive.

  I was in a bar near my parents' house. My parents were not at home they were thousands of miles away, living in a house I had never seen except in photographs. I was planning to stay in my parents' empty house, and catch the eleven-thirty train to London the next morning for my date, which was for lunch, at first, and then possibly an afternoon and an evening and a night.

  My friend said, 'Don't you ever worry about your dick?' `My dick?'

  `You know herpes. Everybody's getting herpes these days.'