Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
It was the perfect attention-grabbing headline:
"Eating fried potatoes linked to higher risk of death," CNN announced last week.
Not true.
Actually, the lifetime risk of death for people who eat french fried potatoes is 100 percent.
Ditto for breathers of fresh air, vegetarians, yoga practitioners, triathletes and cardiologists. The lifetime risk of mortality for human beings in Chattanooga, Tenn. - notwithstanding fried potato intake - is 100 percent, plain and simple.
We die. That's what humans do.
Headline writers cannot be trusted with statistics, especially when they involve health studies. They always leave out a crucial qualifier. In CNN's case, it was the time element.
If the headline had read, "Eating fried potatoes linked to higher risk of early death," it would have been true. Even then, early is relative. It turns out that almost half the people in the study were old enough to collect a Social Security check when the study began.
The study, published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, does show a correlation between eating fried potatoes more than a couple of times a week and an elevated risk of an early demise. So what is early? A month? A year? A decade?
It matters. Given the choice, I might give the Grim Reaper a month for a daily basket of fries.
As a people, Americans have become so risk-averse that we love to demonize food groups based on studies that often seem to change with the wind. I've been around long enough to remember three or four shifts in the risk-reward ratio for small amounts of weekly alcohol intake. And don't get me started on the age-old question: Chocolate, friend or foe?
The potato study involved a group of older people - average age about 61 - with osteoarthritis or with a high risk for developing it. Over eight years, members of the group who ate fried potatoes more than two times a week doubled their risk for early death.
Let me suggest an alternative headline: Sicker, more sedentary old people probably should cut back on fast food, study says.
Raise your hand if you needed a study to come to that commonsense conclusion.
I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that the jury is still out on french fries. I would like to see a couple of more studies published before I give up on my favorite food.
When it comes to fries, I share a sentiment with Karl from "Sling Blade" who famously said: "I like them french fried potaters."
Me too, Karl.
As a person of Scots-Irish ancestry I am genetically predisposed to potato consumption, and fried is my preferred cooking method. My only memory of visiting Arizona on an airplane when I was 4 years old is discovering hash browns.
Americans are uniquely eager to categorize edibles as either poison or as magic, life-saving "super food."
Read enough studies, and you will no doubt conclude that a perfect meal for an American would be a couple of glasses of red wine with a side order of blueberries and a morning-after aspirin.
For my part, fire up the FryDaddy and pass me the ketchup.
If fried potatoes turns out to be my last meal, I will die a happy man.
Contact Mark Kennedy at 423-757-6645 or mkennedy@timesfreepress.com.