Only a dietitian could state, without a trace of irony, that crisps ‘can be part of a healthy balanced diet.’ I did a double take when I heard just that on the recent BBC programme Britain’s Favourite Supermarket Foods, presented by the immensely likeable but utterly guileless Cherry Healey.
What a strangely uninformative programme it turned out to be. If it’s edible, or drinkable, then it’s good for you, seemed to be the expert opinion on virtually every food or drink item discussed. We started with tea. Tea contains antioxidants and antioxidants can help prevent cancer, heart disease and stroke. We drink gallons of the stuff every day, it was established, but nobody spotted the obvious paradox that the three biggest killers today in Britain are .. cancer, heart disease and stroke.
We got round to crisps. It was generally agreed that crisps are full of salt, and salt is bad. But hang on – it turns out that crisps don’t have all that much salt after all! Well they do, but everything being relative, you could say they hardly have any. Our sanguine dietitian pointed out that you’d have to eat five whole packs of crisps to get the salt equivalent of a mere six slices of white bread. Comparing one junk food item with another does not a clear picture paint. But what truly redeemed our crisps was the revelation that, despite all the salt, they also contain potassium – just like bananas and broccoli! This elevated the previously reprehensible crisp to superfood status.
This disingenuous, reductionist approach is unhelpful and misleading. Isolating single chemicals in a food or drink and finding something good to say about those chemicals does not make the whole food worthy of a healthy diet. You could be forgiven for believing that eating crisps and drinking tea all day was all you needed to do to guarantee a long and healthy life. No matter how tasty or moreish crisps may be, and what lovely nibbles they make at drinks parties and other social gatherings, and how we all have our favourite flavours (cheese & onion), we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Healthy they are not, and you really do not want to be eating them on a regular basis, in my opinion. When carbohydrate foods such as potatoes are fried at high temperatures, chemicals called acrylamides are produced – if it’s oily and crunchy, that’s the acrylamide experience for you. Acrylamide is one of the chemicals that make up cigarette smoke and is believed to be carcinogenic, as it has been found to be associated with ovarian and endometrial cancer. Acrylamide is also an industrial product, used for various purposes such as construction grouting, sewage treatment and paper making. It is also known to cause nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy) to humans exposed in the workplace. Crisps are usually fried in polyunsaturated oil such as sunflower, which is another disaster area in terms of health and one which I previously covered in my post on breakfast bars (Jan 16). Believe me, there are better ways of getting a good intake of potassium.
Britain’s Favourite Supermarket Foods – a great boost for the industry. Bewildering for the rest of us.
Wilson, K., Mucci, L.A., Rosner, B.A. & Willett, W.C. (2010) A prospective study on dietary acrylamide intake and the risk for breast, endometrial and ovarian cancers. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 19:2503