For those of you that do not know, I have been living in Europe for the past three years. In fact I hadn't even visited America for the past two years. Now I have been home for several weeks for the holidays and I have come to realize that American restaurants have tormented and twisted food into grotesque combinations,unhealthy additions and generally disgusting coatings, breadings, sauces and such.

Exhibit A: Green Bean Fries
My step-mother just brought a box of T.G.I.Friday's Green Bean Fries home from the store. So I thought I would start with these. Green beans are good, as a matter of fact they're even healthy if you weren't in the know. But taking them, breading them and then frying them in oil just seems like an appalling transformation of a long time staple of healthy eating. It is almost as if the creator of this 'appetizer' had a grudge against health food in general and green veggies in particular. Served with Cucumber-wasabi ranch to pad the spare tire even further.

Exhibit B: Fried Mac and Cheese?
You're kidding me right? They took a standard kid's meal and made it into bite-sized morsels of fat and excess and called it an appetizer. I can honestly say that sounds less than appetizing and perhaps even borderline nauseating. Macaroni and cheese from a box was never really healthy but then putting it into globules, smothering it with breading and then dunking it into the deep fryer seems a sin against all that is gastronomic. Is this the foundation of an anti-gastronomic war on good food? I hope not.

No wonder almost everyone I know has expanded in the last 2 years while I have shrunk to just nine-pounds over my high school graduation weight.