Crisps
I cannot remember a time when I didn’t have crisps in my life until now.
A packet lunch at school or on an outing or when you went to work and took sandwiches to eat at lunch time, whenever or whatever it was for, the meal was not complete without a packet of crisps.
Even in recent years, I destressed from work by having a packet of crisps, sometimes two packets and a beer or two.
Let us look at the constituent parts of a crisp, or as it is called in the US, a potato chip.
If you want to make your own, which i have done in the past, you take a potato, which is already high in starchy carbohydrate and slice it thinly. This divides the ingredients into very small pieces that will not take a lot of effort on the part of your body to digest. To get the thing to fry properly you typically need to wash the slices, dry them thoroughly and then fry them in oil. The oil needs to be very hot to get the right results. We often re-use oil from a previous frying so the oil is reheated. Vegetable oils are often in the kitchen cupboard as this is said to be healthier for us than animal fats. However vegetable oils are the product of high levels of manufacturing processes. Some people in the world of keto say that these oils are best suited to be used as engine oil rather than human food yet for years I have used vegetable oil for cooking.
Reheated vegetable fat is further degraded by being heated multiple times so the bad health effects of using a manufactured oil are further compounded by the fact that we are re-using it.
Finally we add salt. Salt is a mineral that is essential for our bodies to function and ironically it is probably the one part of the crisp or potato chip that the body really needs but by the time we get to the salt, the crisp is already a high carbohydrate, high unhealthy fat, high calorie snack.
And this is how a crisp is made in a kitchen that I have some control over. What happens in a heavily industrialized process is something else entirely. Where the potato comes from, what oil is used, how many times it is re-heated and the salt and flavorings, e numbers and other preservatives and additives may be listed in the small print on the packet but do we ever pause to think about it ?
When you eat a packet, you want to eat another one. This is no surprise as it has kick started the body into creating glucose and subsequently insulin. A cycle of energy burning and fat storage commences. Hunger leads to eating another packet and the cycle continues. In fact I think that things like this are made to have this effect, so that you buy more of them and the manufacturer makes more money.
The simplest way to stop craving foods like this is to eat healthy fat. However you get it into your body be it olive or olive based oil, cheese, butter, eggs, meat or fish, any or all will have the effect of satiating your hunger and reducing your cravings for foods that are high in carbohydrates and unhealthy fats.
My choice was and is to no longer eat crisps as it has been something I lost control over in the past but you need to make your own choice. If you are pre-diabetic or diabetic, I would suggest you give up crisps too.