Spud's Eleven

A shady study, fry factory heist, and whole lot of bad potato jokes. (Muse #75)

Perhaps you’ve felt it yourself: that twitch, that Pavlovian response that occurs when someone else’s plate comes out with French fries and yours doesn’t.

The desire to eat just one is so intense, as if having been starved for months, that your first instinct is to find a way to take one, even before you’ve looked at your own food …even if it means resorting to thievery.

Turns out, it’s not just fry envy. It’s biological.

A recent study published in the Journal of Food Quality and Preference, entitled “Stolen Fries Are Spicier Than Justice: How Covert Larceny Enhances Taste,” posits that pilfering a fry makes it taste even better.

In fact, 40% crispier, saltier, and more flavorful than one rightfully acquired. Which only serves to heighten that sense of being tragically, violently, cruelly, callously denied the taste of that French fry in your mouth.

And which also raises some very deep-fried questions, such as: What is the profile of these so-called fry thieves? 2) Why does it taste better if it’s the exact same French fry? And 3) Who takes a study like this seriously?

Profile of a Fry Thief

According to the study, more than 65% of diners admit to sneaking a fry directly off someone else’s plate, and that these bandits are likely to be:

• White males of Ashkenazi descent who once lived in Queens, NY, had strawberry-blond hair as youngsters and now generally like anything crispy. Oh, wait: that’s me. Guilty as charged.

• Soybean farmers who provide the core ingredient for vegetable oil, a.k.a. frying grease, and who lament that they do all the work but don’t get to enjoy the fruits … ah, fries … of their labor.

• Anyone in Hamburglar’s family tree. (Note: Horney runs in the Hammy clan.)

Surveillance photo

Actually, the answer is simple: it’s virtually everyone. 87% of people hold a positive opinion of French fries, which is about 75% better than most politicians.

Perhaps even more impressive: French fries rank as the #1 most popular American dish, beating the beloved burger.

Why Stolen Fries Taste Better

A fry is a fry, right? Wrong.

That combination of golden-brown caramelized starch and creamyish interior, covered in a light coating of salt, gleaming with fryolated heat, in a shape perfectly mated for Freudian pleasure, is hard to deny.

Hungry yet?

And faced with this forbidden fruit, your brain goes into Little Shop of Horrors mode, à la “Feed Me!” So when you sneak that fry off of someone else’s plate, you’re getting a mild thrill that enhances your taste perception — or so the study says.

A word of caution, however: Should you be led to believe that all foods taste better when snarfled, think again.

Brussels sprouts, blue cheese balls, and a Taco Bell Chalupa Supreme all taste worse if you steal them because they never tasted good in the first place.

The Pantheon of Useless Studies

With all the problems in the world and the great many mysteries of our time, one can’t help but wonder why a study such as "Stolen Fries Are Spicier Than Justice" is ever conducted in the first place.

So why not study the motivations of the studiers who devote their time and resources in search of insights unlikely to do anything more than provide fodder for an article such as this. There’d be no shortage of input data. Consider these (all are true):

• Nearly 45% of all Americans pee in the shower regularly (Talker Research) — which may sound like a lot, unless you live on Pee Pee Island in Newfoundland.

• Yes, goldfish can be taught how to drive. Check out the fish-operated vehicle (FOV) in the study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

Fish-Operated Vehicle

• Discarded chewing gum smooshed on the pavement can contain 427 varieties of bacteria, according to a team of researchers from the University of Valencia. Been tempted to scrape a wad off the ground and chew it? Don’t, unless you are studying whether it still has flavor and can tell which brand it is.

The Spuds Eleven Caper

Studies like these have their admirers, of course. But some take it way too far.

Take Tony “Spuds” Hamilton, for example, a potato hoarder and self-described potatophile who tried to steal a record-breaking 11.4-pound potato on display at the Western Idaho Fair in August 2024, but was rebuffed by an elderly fairgoer who caught him in the act and flogged him with a corn dog.

Undeterred after doing time in jail, Spuds learned of the “Stolen Fries Are Spicier Than Justice” research and had an epiphany inspired by the plot of the movie Goldfinger. If he could “contaminate” a global supply of French fries, his own stockpile of potatoes would soar in value, he’d become a national hero, and be paid millions to return the fry supply to its thief-rousing glory.

His target: the largest French fry factory in the United States, Lamb Weston, which produces more than 1.1 million pounds of French fries every day in its 600,000-square-foot mega-facility.

The Lamb Weston Fry Factory

Spuds’ plot: gain access to the factory, distract the staff, and, at the stage of the production process when a batter coating is applied to add flavor and texture to the fries, sabotage it with a chemical that gradually turns the potatoes an unsightly gray and “dress it with a rancid flavor.”

Spuds rounded up ten other criminals, convicts and crackpots to help pull off his heist, who included:

• Jonathan Wiggly, an illusionist and certified Mr. Potato Head re-enactor renowned for his ability to remove any part of his body, or even turn it upside down — a feat so remarkable it was known to stop people in their tracks in utter disbelief. Wiggly’s job: distract the security personnel at the perimeter of the factory so that it could be breached.

• Percy Pitman, granddaughter of the inventor of the Frialator, J.C. Pitman, whom she held in contempt for failing to invent a gluten-free product, and to whom he would entrust the job of greasing the factory lineworkers to look the other way while their dastardly plot unfolded.

• Bill “Bam Bam” McGrill, a Denny’s short-order cook by day and inventor by night. His crowning achievement: an “RFID-blocking” wallet that was actually an RFID-boosting wallet, which earned him the distinction of being a fellow convict. Bam Bam’s job: hack the factory’s ERP system so that the batter machine (an “enrober”) would accept the new chemical coating.

• Ms. Pearl Onyun, an octogenarian geneticist and accomplished potato pie chef, who dedicated her life to crossbreeding potato varieties in search of an answer to soggy takeout fries, and whose job it was to engineer the foul-tasting composite to coat the Lamb Weston product.

Also present: five members of the Terreton Tater Tots youth cheerleading team, who, desperately in need of a fundraiser, were duped into thinking that $100 was well worth it to cheer on the criminal cabal as they executed their plan.

Long story short, the caper started as planned: Wriggley’s Potato Head antics had everyone at the security detail impervious to what was happening because they were too busy vomiting uncontrollably; the floor staff pretended not to see anything when the truck that looked like a gasoline tanker pulled up to the loading dock; and Bam Bam successfully reprogrammed the factory battering machine.

But Ms. Onyun, whose hearing was never great to begin with, thought she was tasked to create a chemical concoction mimicking “ranch,” not “rancid” dressing — which, though an unsightly gray, turned out to be pretty good.

In fact, foreigners who unwittingly tried the product became so enamored with it that many were caught trying to smuggle it in their luggage when returning home. As a result, Ranch Fries became so popular that Lamb Weston added it to its product mix and had to run its shifts overtime to meet the demand.

Eager to be credited for her work, Pearl ratted on Spuds, sending him back to prison, and, as part of her plea deal, was anointed Grand Poobah of this year’s Western Idaho Fair.

EPILOGUE

Why, dear reader, have I regaled you with this tale? It’s because a team of researchers at DeVry University subsequently embarked on a study to determine if ranch dressing is an aphrodisiac, particularly when consumed with French fries.

Their findings hypothesized that, yes, it is, if digested after viewing a minimum of six hours of pornography.