Thick french fries are healthier than thin french fries, aka shoestrings.
Note, I didn't say thick french fries are healthy, otherwise I'd be the healthiest person you will ever read about. No, there's less acrylamide in thick french fries than in shoestrings. How do I know that? Dr. Joe, aka Dr. Joe Schwarcz, said that in a recent book called, Dr. Joe & What You Didn't Know. The operating sub-title is: 177 Fascinating Questions and Answers about the Chemistry of Everyday Life.
By the way, Dr. Joe does actually explain how to make cooking french fries as healthy as possible.
I am a big admirer of Joe Schwarcz. I first discovered him years ago on the Discovery Channel's eonymous show that featured a daily look at the scientific world. He managed to break chemistry and bio-chemistry down into easy to digest gulps of infotainment. One of his earliest works, Radar, Hula Hoops and Playful Pigs, proved to me that he has the ability to turn that intellectual whimsy into solid writing too. I cannot recommend the book more highly.
So, when it finally came time to start perusing What You Didn't Know in the reading room, I ended up over-staying the reasons for the visit on more than one occasion. The book is the perfect bathroom reader, as each of the 177 facts gets somewhere between a half-page and a couple of pages of exposition. There's occasionally some tangential writing, but it's a solid science/history lesson in a comfortable portion size.
I admit, sometimes I bite off more than I can chew of heavyweight science. Like a gazillion others, I have Stephen Hawking's books on my bookshelf (A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell), each with a chapter or two read. I actually got about halfway through Charles Sheffield's Borderlands of Science. My ambitions exceeded my intellectual grasp. But Schwarcz's books invite the reader in. There's a whole chemistry course in each one, replete with interesting experiments to try (and those to stay away from).
His latest is An Apple A Day. Given my current zeal for eating an apple a day, I am anxious to get the book during my birthday reading week two months from now. And truth be told, I'm REALLY worried he's going to expose the idea as completely and utterly wrong!
But at least I'll know.
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