The good news: Americans are starting to eat out at fast food restaurants again, celebrating our nascent economic recovery with fried flash-frozen potatoes. The bad news: one fast food giant is "rethinking" its french fries—imperiling American fry nostalgia.

Now, at the very moment that Americans are emerging from their cave-homes after a solid two years of skunk stew and seeking out traditional American fast food dining options, Wendy's has decided to change its french fries. And not just any old change: a hippie change.

For the last year, the company has been examining its product line for opportunities to promote food made with more natural ingredients, Mr. Calwell said. Wendy's "new natural-cut fries with sea salt" use Russet Burbank potatoes and are thinner and crisper than the current fries and will be unpeeled.

"Natural." "Sea salt." "Unpeeled." If Americans wanted to scavenge unpeeled potatoes from the earth and season them with evaporated seawater, we'd all return to our cave-homes, where we've been doing just that since our portfolios collapsed in 2008. Poor, poor reading of the American psyche, Wendy's.