Fake French Fry Warning!
A Public Servce Announcement
Despite rather strict labeling laws in the Western World, it has come to our attention that a number of products in various countries are being touted as some variant of "Fries" or "French Fried something-or other" and other such similarly misleading names. DON'T BE FOOLED! Not only are most of these products not hot, they're not even meant to be eaten hot, let alone with ketchup or mayo.
DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!
The first clue is that the majority of these fakes are sold in sealed bags on convenience store shelves like potato chips. This is clearly an effort to take advantage of the weary traveler who stops for a well-deserved break from driving the rather treacherous highway and who hopes for a quick bite of the most bestest food ever. Mind on other things, our hapless victim sees a bag labeled "Frites" and without reading the fine print, grabs it, pays for it and leaves, only to discover the swindle and suffer the disappointed after returning to the drive, with no realistic means of returning to that particular service area in under 90 minutes.WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!
In grocery stores unwitting children also see the large, misleading description and torment their harried parents into accepting the additional purchase. Only later is the fraud realised. Despite our experience and expertise with French Fries, even the Official French Fries Pages have been duped numerous times into purchasing these snacks which, in some cases, contain absolutely no potato whatsoever!FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED: WE NAME AND SHAME!
The following is a list of known products all bearing misleading labels along with a review of the contents. Note that none of these products are actually French Fries.
FRITELLES (France)
If you were to think about all the countries in the world where you would expect the government to put a quick stop to anyone trying to cause connfusion by making things that aren't French Fries actually seem like French Fries, you would probably put France near the top of that list. We certainly did. So imagine our surprise as we came across these "Frites" at a service station on the A4 while driving north to Paris.
Click pictures for high-resolution versions
Des Frites encore plus légères et toujours aussi délicieuses! Avec seulement 10% de matières grasses, craquez pour la légèreté et la croustillance de Fritelle. Dorées comme le soleil, au bon goût de pomme de terre, ces frites fines et légères vous accompagneront dans tous vos moments de détente, Déguestez-les selon vos envies... Pour faire pétiller vos apéritifs entre amis, ou pour vous accorder une pause gourmande dans la journée. Variez la plaisirs et laissez-vous s´duire par l'ensemble de la gamme FritelleAnd a really bad translation:
Chips which are even lighter and also always delicious! With only 10% fat content, crack for the lightness and the crunchiness of Fritelle. Gilded like the sun, with the good potato taste, these fine and light chips will accompany you in all your moments by relaxation, Taste them according to your desires... To make sparkle your aperitifs between friends, or to grant to you a greedy pause in the course of the day. Vary the pleasures and let yourself be led by the whole range of Fritelle.
Along with the "Lightly salted" variant in the green bag, they've also got blue bags with emmental (swiss cheese) flavour and the red bag with "Tasty Bacon" flavour. The service station in which we discovered these didn't carry the other varieties. Clearly they were able to dupe enough unsuspecting drivers with their "lightly salted" Fritelle packages. Now that we think about it, this could be a cunningly shrewd move designed to further confusion. Who ever heard of bacon-flavoured French fries? Seeing such a bag might alert our tired commuter to the fraud which the service station is attempting to commit.
Technical details:
Manufactured by Pepsi.
1 bag = 27g, 115kcal (486 kj), 2g protein, 20g carbohydrates, 2.7g fat, 270mg sodium
Ingredients: semoule de mais, purée de pomme de terre déshydratée, huille végétale, aròme sel [arômes, exhausteurs de goûts (glutamate monosodique, guanylate disoclique, inosinate disodique), farine de blé], sel, conservateur (disulfite de sodium)
Ingredients in English:
corn meal, dehydrated mashed potato, vegetable oil, salt flavouring [flavour enhancers [MSG, disoclique guanylate, disodium inosinate], wheat flour], salt, preservatives (disulfite sodium) .
Seems like these fakers can't even decide what grain or tuber to base their snack on. corn, potato, wheat. How did they forget rice, the cornerstone of so many crunchy snacks? There is something rotten in the state of France, or at least in the shops along their highways. (n.b.: French highways charge rather high tolls which currently cost more than the gasoline used to move the car from one toll booth to the next.)
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So what are they really?
In short, they're crispy snackfood in the form of French fries, but made with (maize) corn instead of potaotes.
They're light, airy, crispy... and taste nothing like potatoes, much less French Fries. Despite a 27g package having 270mg of sodium, the first thing you taste isn't salt but the MSG. These things are dripping in flavour enhancer. The rest of the flavour is hard to describe, along the lines of "Funyuns without the onion flavour". They're also not filling. Our testing team was actually hungrier and thirstier after finishing the bag than we were before the start of the test. We wanted to write more about them but... what? They're the food equivalent of the Miss South Carolina answer to the question she received in the 2007 Miss Teen USA 2007 pageant.
In five years or so we're going to look back at this review and realise that we've once again dated ourselves. Badly.
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YOU CAN HELP
If you've come across a similar product which purports to be tasty French Fries but doesn't actually deliver on the promise, let us know. Tell usd what the product is and where you found it. If possible send a sample (or even the left-over packaging) to the Select Ware Culinary and Food Technology Labs for further analysis.THE DARK SIDE
If you work for a company which produces any product listed on this page or a similar product which we haven't yet stumbled upon, we welcome your response and explanation. We also welcome additional samples for our continued research and analysis. We naturally request an interview but would settle for an official statement. Hint: tongue-in-cheek goes over much better with our readers than does dilberty corporate management-speak blabbering.
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