I wanna' soak up the potato

French fries aren't exactly on the That's Fit healthy menu, buuuuut sometimes a little reward is well worth the temporary departure from your diet. Nevertheless, calories and blood sugar spikes aside, we definitely don't want our fries to contain known carcinogens. So, if you're going to break from your diet for a few chips, don't risk cashing in everything in the process.

To safeguard your health, be sure to soak your potatoes in water before frying them, says a new study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. Doing so can stop the formation of acrylamide, a cancer-causing compound that is produced naturally when starchy foods are cooked at temperatures above 248 degrees Fahrenheit.

Researchers discovered that the longer you allow your potatoes to soak in water, the less chance they have to form the carcinogen. For example, the study revealed that just washing raw French fries, soaking them for 30 minutes or soaking them for two hours reduced the formation of acrylamide by up to 23 percent, 38 percent and 48 percent respectively