Chips/Crisps: You Cannot Eat Just One

I'm pretty sure that's scientifically proven. Pretty sure. ;)

Even with everything I've learned I've been unable to completely walk away from the chip.

I know potato chips are not the healthiest food. I try not to buy them too often and when I do I go for what I think are the more natural (and hopefully healthier) options. They all still have fat and usually saturated fat too. (Saturated fats raise total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the bad one). The AHA recommends limited saturated fat intake to less than 7% of calories a day.) I know this and yet in the last year at least once I ate a family-size bag in less than a week. It's that same salt/fat combo that makes people want to eat more and more fast food and is so so so not good for you. I can stay away from fast food though.

It's not just the nutritional content that can be problematic though; it's the overeating. See the aforementioned family-size bag. The other day I stumbled upon an article on NPR's Shots blog: "The Naked Truth About the Chip Aisle." It made me realize I have never had just one chip (or crisp, dependent on which country I'm in) and then closed up the bag and put them away. You eat one. And without even thinking you hand is back in the bag. Suddenly you're stuffed, your greasy and/or salty hand is sweeping for any remaining fragments and you're not even totally sure how it happened.

In my case, I then try to appease myself with the thought that I could have bought less healthy chips.

image from Roadsidepictures on Flickr

This article though brought up a point I hadn't even considered... that those premium, "natural" chips could have more fat per serving than Pringles. Crap. I've fallen for the allure of the naturally formed chip that doesn't stack neatly in a tube. They say in the article that comparing the salt, fat, and calorie count on the fly in the grocery store is overwhelming. While I wouldn't call it that, I know it is time consuming. I've taken several minutes in the aisle before comparing bags to find the least unhealthy of the options in front of me.

Enter HealthCastle.com, a nutrition website run by dietitians (and introduced to me by the article). They compare foods and have a handy chip review tool. Of course it doesn't have every kind of chip out there, but I definitely found ones I recognized and had bought before in the 40 listed. You can go see if your preferred chips are on the list, make some comparisons, and decide where to go from there. And remember to multiply the calories/salt/fat since you're liable to eat more than one serving size in a sitting.

You can also read the Shots blog article if you'd like.

I'm going to go definitely put chips on the only-eat-sometimes food list... in marker.

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