I am a native Southerner. I love fried foods. (Old style Southern cuisine relies heavily on frying. There's a joke that Southerners will attempt to fry anything.) But obviously, all that oil and grease tends to mitigate many of a food's health benefits. There has been a recent push to reshape Southern cuisine by employing alternative methods of cooking. While this has met with some success, for many Southerners there is no substitute for frying. I am in that number; I may enjoy baked asparagus, but make it tempura and I'm in heaven. As a result, I've decided the best solution is to make "frying" itself a healthier method of cooking.
Luckily for me, technology has my back. The kitchen appliances industry has recently introduced into the mainstream so-called airfryers, gadgets which rely on air convection (and sometimes a small amount of oil) to crisp foods. As is the case with any consumer market, not all airfryers are created equal, so I've been researching these small kitchen appliances and reading reviews --- the latest issue of Men's Journal magazine has a one-page comparison and rating of four leading airfryer models, for instance --- with the idea of acquiring one.
I'm not giving up French fries, but if I can make fries healthier and still achieve that comfort food level of satisfaction that comes from "fries" then it's a win. Airfryer reports and reviews are promising overall. It seems the technology may have actually arrived to achieve a healthier fryup in the home consumer market. But it's a process to find the right machine for my needs. I don't expect to make a purchase tomorrow. However, the airfryer is on my radar and one will eventually make a debut in my kitchen (most likely, post-renovation, however).