These are not good times to be a processed potato in the shape of a frozen chip or a battered smiley face, which both need to be deep-fried before they reach the restaurant plate. Warnings are everywhere that too much deep-fried potato is affecting the health of the nation. Even the word potato has slipped into a byword for a sloth-like existence when following the word couch.

Depending on how they're fried, chips can be 15% fat by the time they arrive on the plate. A plain boiled potato is 0.3% fat, potatoes without any salt are difficult to like, and salt sales have fallen by 12% in the past two years, but in its raw state a potato contains no salt. It's added by someone along the food chain.

Hardly any wonder that the British Potato Council, which is charged with promoting potato-eating out of home, is frustrated that consumers don't all realise that it's not potatoes coming out of the ground that can raise the calorie count and blood pressure, but how they're cooked and what's added to them.

It's also no surprise that food manufacturers which make potato products for the catering industry are aware of the health and nutrition sensitivity of fat in some of their key sales markets and are developing new potato products with less fat content.

The biggest buyer of potatoes in the UK is also the company most readily associated with potato products for the UK catering industry, McCain. Every one of the 500,000 tonnes of UK potatoes it buys every year goes into processing, and all have something added, almost always fat and in some products, salt. While public attention has focused on the fat and salt content of potato products served to children in schools, there's concern across all sectors of the catering industry.

McCain has supply contracts to many big high-street restaurant chains, and sales director Bill Bartlett says it's talking to all its major customers about reformulation of potato products with regard to the oil used in chips and the amount of salt in shaped products. Yet this is not heralding any switch away from the deep-fat fryer by restaurant chains, says Bartlett. "The easiest way to reconstitute a high volume of potato products is to use a deep fat fryer," he says.

McCain wants to combine producing healthier chips with educating caterers on how to fry chips in a more healthy way. Behind this is a new scheme called Best Fry Practice, in which McCain works with customers to audit the way chips are being fried and show them how to do it better. This includes explaining the importance of using deep-fat fryers which can rapidly pull the temperature of the oil back up to the recommended 175°C frying temperature for frozen chips. Dropping a basket of frozen chips into a fryer can plunge the temperature of the oil down to 160°C, when oil absorption will be considerably more than frying at 175°C. Low-power fryers may never recover temperature fully before the frying time of three minutes is complete.

Oil management also features in the McCain training package, which explains that old, dirty oil contributes to greasier chips. As well as on-site training, McCain has produced a better-frying practice video and has pictorial wall charts explaining how best to fry chips and keep fat absorption to a minimum.

Standard-fry chips can be oven-baked to give them a lower fat content, but this won't deliver as good a product as oven-baking true oven chips, according to Bartlett. "There's no difference in the fat content of oven chips and fry chips when manufactured, but fry chips are made to brown and crisp in a fryer, not an oven," he says.

Surrey Commercial Services (SCS), a local authority provider of school meals in Surrey, was one of the first services to begin oven-cooking instead of frying chips in Surrey primary schools and, says regional manager Chris Hillier, only true oven chips are used. "There's a slight increase in costs in buying oven chips, but since we only serve chips once in the three-week menu cycle in primary schools, it doesn't really matter."

As a sign of its commitment to reducing fat in potato products SCS has also introduced a policy of not replacing deep-fat fryers when they break down beyond economic repair in one of its primary school contracts. A similar policy exists on a rolling basis in Surrey secondary schools, where regeneration of oven chips is increasingly done in combi-ovens.

With so much attention on fried food, the company has been working hard in the past year to develop potato products with a healthier image than chips.

Spearheading this is the imminent launch of frozen mashed potato, small medallions of mashed potato cooked without salt and just a little milk. They can be reconstituted in a microwave oven, with three medallions making a serving portion to which the chef can add seasoning, butter and flavours, with the whisking process giving a just-mashed appearance.

Still in the development stage by McCain are frozen jacket potatoes - like mashed potato, currently taking only a small share of the
frozen potato market in catering, but with the potential to grow because of the push towards healthier frozen and chilled potato products.

McCain has also moved to protect its lucrative schools business by changing the oils it cooks some potato products in and reducing salt content. It's now cooking its big-selling Potato Smiles in sunflower oil rather than blended vegetable oil, and has reduced the salt content by 50%. Mini Waffles, another popular primary school menu item, is being revamped by cooking in sunflower oil and with a 50% salt reduction.

Aviko is another major provider of potato products in the UK and, while chips remain its core product, the company has launched a range of chilled steamed potato products with no added salt or fat under the Steamfresh brand. Regeneration should ideally be done in a combi-oven, after which the chef can either serve it as a neutral fat and salt product or add enough dairy fat and salt for flavour.

Manufacturers have recognised the shift in public perception of potato products in terms of nutrition and health, and are developing new products with lower fat and salt to sit alongside standard deep-fried potatoes.