Test purchase: which chips are safer for health? About the benefits and harms of potato chips.

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When it comes to US cuisine, or more precisely, the style of eating in this undoubtedly innovative state, chips come to mind, of course, right after hamburgers and fast food chains.
Today there is not a single person between the ages of 6 and 50 who does not occasionally consume chips. A symbol of men's beer company, movie screenings, lonely breakfast, as well as gastritis - all these are chips.

Chips are simply thinly sliced slices of potato or apple or pineapple or whatever. True, in our country they are perceived exclusively as a potato product packed in a bag.

The first step towards creating chips familiar to all Belarusians was taken by the desperate gourmet railroad builder from America Vanderbilt, who tortured his personal chef George Croom with new food requirements.
One day in 1853, Vanderbilt was giving dinner to his French companions. One of the French had the imprudence to notice that in their homeland potatoes are fried in thinner pieces. “Yes, we can do that too!” - the owner exclaimed and ordered the cook to fry a new portion of potatoes, but “thinner, much thinner!”
The order was completed, but the millionaire was so carried away that he again began to demand: “Thinner, even thinner!” Then the cook, angry with the owner, took a sharp razor, cut the potatoes into slices slightly thicker than a paper sheet and, frying them in boiling oil, served the new dish to the owner and his guests. Such an original dish, however, was enjoyed by everyone.
Crispy potatoes, as a new invention, were soon patented, and its progenitor, cook Croom, left a place with the millionaire Vanderbilt, founded a potato chip company and, it is worth noting, made his own million-dollar fortune with its help.

Modernity

Today, the name “chips” combines three independent types of products, similar in shape - all of them are thin plates. Also common to these products is the process of frying in vegetable oil.
1. Potatoes are crispy. This product has been familiar to us since Soviet times: fresh potato slices fried in oil, seasoned with or without salt.
Potato chips are molded plates of rectangular (100x40x2 mm) or cubic (square: 40x40 mm) shape.
2. Molded chips. They are made by frying thin plates, flat or corrugated, formed from potato dough, into which, according to the recipe, in addition to potatoes, cereal flour, starch, and salt are also added. The taste of fried potatoes in such chips is practically lost, so most often even more aromatic compositions are added to such chips against the background of monosodium glutamate - the most famous and widely used flavor enhancer in the world. In Europe, this type of chips is now preferred. Domestic manufacturers are also paying attention to it, betting on some of the advantages of their production.
3. Airy chips. The taste of these chips is very delicate, the presence of starch is almost not noticeable. To flavor this type of chips, significantly fewer additives are required and, as a rule, natural seasonings are used.

Reflections at the counter

Speaking about modern chips, it’s hard not to notice the advantage of molded chips compared to others. Their obvious positive aspects compared to those produced from “fresh potatoes” are obvious. Chips “Pringles”, “Lays” and others like them are supposed to be simple fried potatoes, which are super-thinly sliced and packaged. But excuse me, where is the guarantee that these potatoes are fresh, harmless, naturally grown and not genetically modified? It simply doesn’t exist, so turn your precious consumer attention to chips made using the “air” technology. On the Belarusian market, the undisputed leaders in this segment are Onega and Chelz chips.
If we compare them with the same “Pringles” (the survey showed that buyers have particular confidence in this brand), then the first thing that will catch your eye is the fact that the latter have an increased fat content, which is 38.5%.
While the fat content of Onega is 5% lower. These chips are made from a dry semi-finished product - "pellets" by short-term frying in vegetable oil, followed by the application of flavoring and aromatic additives. Unlike the traditional technology for making chips from fresh potatoes, the pellet frying technology has a number of advantages, the main one of which is a short technological cycle, quick frying for 5-15 seconds in vegetable oil, while chips from fresh potatoes need to be fried for 8-10 minutes, which negatively affects the quality of the finished product and fat content.
Why did we talk specifically about the fat content of the chip product? Judge for yourself, this is the indicator that speaks about the calorie content and tactile “convenience”.

Other advantages of Onega chips is the use of high-quality raw materials: potato flakes, wheat flour and starch. Belarusian potatoes are used for production, which means that the likelihood of consuming gene potato mutants is completely eliminated. A semi-finished product prepared from these components is a guarantee of stable quality, uniform taste, and a specific corrugated elongated structure contributes to the most convenient use of chips. Moreover, “Onega” and “Chels” chips are produced in our country, which means they meet local sanitary and hygienic requirements, formulated in strict accordance with Belarusian realities.

Speaking today about chips, everyone understands perfectly well that this is far from the healthiest product in our lives and we should not abuse the variety of flavors of the salty “crunches”. But, as they say, you have to choose the lesser of two evils. This means that in this case it is better to stop looking at the local chip attractions.
To minimize the “chips harm”, try to consume them as much as possible on their own, but not with beer (in this case, all the calories will be yours for a long time). Also, chips cannot be the only food a day, do not force your stomach to work only with “weighted material”, make sure that even in a situation of acute hunger there is not only a pack of chips, but also a pack of kefir nearby.

Many people truly believe that chips are made from potatoes. It’s just cut into thin slices and fried in a special way, that’s all. What's wrong with fried potatoes? After all, we often cook it at home, and it’s very tasty. Of course, some substances are added to the chips to make them tastier and last longer, but this is allowed, right?

Look at this piece of Pringles - what a potato! However, in reality everything is not quite like that...

Pringles are one third water.

Photo 2.

The recipe also includes two-thirds potato flakes.

A mixture of one-third water, two-thirds potato flakes and cornstarch is sent on a conveyor belt to the first stop, the press.

Photo 4.

The press redirects the mixture to another conveyor to compress it.

The resulting mixture will fall onto the belt below and go under a huge roller for pressing.

The conveyor belt uses four tons of pressure to compress the mixture into a potato sheet, which is then cut.

Photo 6.

Using oval templates, the chips are cut from a potato sheet and rolled out with a very heavy roller.

As they move along the conveyor, the ovals end up on the bottom belt and the excess is removed so they can later be recycled to make even more chips.

Photo 9.

The ovals remaining on the belt are sent to a mold, where they become concave and ideal for packaging.

Photo 10.

Once shaped, the chips are fried for 11 seconds until crisp and easy to stack.

The chips then go to another conveyor belt, where the batch is given a particular flavor.

Photo 11.

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A factory employee checks the chips before another conveyor shakes and weighs them for packaging.

Photo 12.

A weighing mechanism determines how many chips should be in each package, then a special spoon places them into the tube.

Photo 13.

Photo 14.

Finally, after the chips are placed in the tubes, a special machine knocks on the lids of the packages so that all the chips take their place and are stacked evenly.

Full video on how Pringles are made:

The vast majority of manufacturers use flour - wheat or corn, as well as a mixture of starches. Very often this is soy starch, mainly from genetically modified soybeans. In the human body, starch is converted into glucose, and if you eat chips often, then excess glucose accumulates in the liver - and this is a sure path to obesity. Chips are formed from the dough obtained by mixing such ingredients, and then fried in cheap fats boiling at 250°C - after all, the use of expensive, refined oils is unprofitable. Chips should not be fried for more than 30 seconds, but this rule is rarely followed.

Harmful flavoring additives for chips

The taste of such chips is far from potato chips - seasonings and flavoring additives again come to the rescue, mainly monosodium glutamate. A lot has been written about this “wonderful” supplement, and we will not repeat here the information, which is not difficult to find. Let us just remember that monosodium glutamate can turn the most unpalatable food into one that you want to eat again and again, without thinking about its actual value. And chip manufacturers first of all need to attract consumers...

The harm of chips. Chips are harmful and dangerous!

Hydrogenated fat that accumulates in chips leads to the formation of “bad” cholesterol - and this is atherosclerosis, thrombophlebitis and other dangerous diseases. During the cooking process, chips become so saturated with fat that, after eating a small bag, we get as much as 30 g of this fat, but often the matter is not limited to one 100-gram bag. Looks like we drank half a cup of fat as a snack...
Of course, there are other manufacturers - they use real potatoes to make chips. However, most often they choose genetically modified potatoes, because their tubers are large, smooth and undamaged - after all, all pests shy away from them. These potatoes are fried in the same cheap fat.

Not only does the frying process destroy absolutely everything healthy that is in potatoes, it acquires other properties - carcinogenic. The breakdown product of fats, acrolein, has mutagenic and carcinogenic properties, and it is formed even with relative adherence to technology. To avoid the formation of large amounts of acrolein, the frying oil must be changed regularly.
Acrylamide is an even more dangerous carcinogen; it is also formed even at home if you choose the wrong oil and get the pan too hot. What can we say about the conditions of continuous production, when many batches of chips are cooked for a long time in the same over-fried fats, which are often unprofitable to change?

Further more. A few years ago, glycidamide, a brother of acrylamide, was found in chips, which can not only cause cancer, but also destroy DNA. And besides these substances that have already been found, how many other toxins formed during the preparation of chips have simply not been studied?

Scientists still cannot say exactly what is formed in our body when it actively receives flavoring additives and other E-boxes, which are contained in abundance in every delicious, crispy circle of chips.
Air chips

There is another type of chips - puffed ones, and today they can be put in last place in terms of the content of toxic substances. These chips are fried for only 10 seconds, but carcinogens accumulate in them, and besides, the potatoes, as a rule, are genetically modified - they have already forgotten about the usual ones. In general, to produce 1 kg of chips you need up to 5 kg of potatoes, so it is more convenient for manufacturers to use different mixtures.
The well-known and advertised Pringles chips contain no more than 42% potatoes, so their manufacturer was even spared from paying the necessary taxes for a long time. It’s just that Pringles chips were not considered a potato product, but rather relatives of baked goods, since the manufacturer used yeast dough to prepare them. Meanwhile, Pringles production technology is no different from others.

There’s so much they don’t write on packets of chips: with cheese, with bacon, with crab and red caviar, etc. True, recently manufacturers have become more honest and write that this or that product is “tasteful”, but consumers still buy - they are already accustomed to crunching on chips for any reason and for no reason: for a company with friends, in front of the TV to interrupt an appetite that has arisen at the wrong time or simply to “kill” time.

However, time turns against us, and gradually chip lovers get heartburn, gastritis, allergies, and problems with intestinal function.

How much salt is in chips? After all, this is precisely why many lovers of “salty” foods reach for the bag, without thinking or trying not to think that excess salt in the body inhibits normal bone growth, causes metabolic disorders and heart disease.

Perhaps, commercials about chips are among the most popular and funniest. Probably everyone has seen the video filmed based on the famous episode of the legendary film “Titanic”, when a guy and a girl are standing on the bow of the ship, in the same poses as the main characters of the film.

But the young man has a bag of chips in his hand, and when the girl tries to “help herself” to them, the guy abruptly lets her go and intercepts the chips. The young beauty flies down, horrifying the audience, but, fortunately, she did not fall into the ocean, but into the pool located below - it was not visible in the close-up. And the guy is happy that he got all the chips...

There are many such stories, and they all seem funny and amusing, at least at first glance. However, if you try to think about the director’s plan, you become a little uneasy: what kind of chips are these that can dampen even such an important instinct as sexual attraction, not to mention sublime romantic feelings?

Production and composition of chips. How are chips made?

Let's try to figure it out at least a little. Are all chips made from potatoes? In fact, the vast majority of manufacturers use flour - wheat or corn, as well as a mixture of starches. Very often this is soy starch, mainly from genetically modified soybeans. In the human body, starch is converted into glucose, and if you eat chips often, then excess glucose accumulates in the liver - and this is a sure path to obesity.

Chips are formed from the dough obtained by mixing such ingredients, and then fried in cheap fats boiling at 250°C - after all, the use of expensive, refined oils is unprofitable. Chips should not be fried for more than 30 seconds, but this rule is rarely followed.

Harmful flavoring additives for chips

The harm of chips. Chips are harmful and dangerous!

Of course, there are other manufacturers - they use real potatoes to make chips. However, most often they choose genetically modified potatoes, because their tubers are large, smooth and undamaged - after all, all pests shy away from them. These potatoes are fried in the same cheap fat.

Acrylamide is an even more dangerous carcinogen; it is also formed even at home if you choose the wrong oil and get the pan too hot. What can we say about the conditions of continuous production, when many batches of chips are cooked for a long time in the same over-fried fats, which are often unprofitable to change?

Air chips

The well-known and advertised Pringles chips contain no more than 42% potatoes, so their manufacturer was even spared from paying the necessary taxes for a long time. It’s just that Pringles chips were not considered a potato product, but rather relatives of baked goods, since the manufacturer used yeast dough to prepare them. Meanwhile, Pringles production technology is no different from others.

However, time turns against us, and gradually chip lovers get heartburn, gastritis, allergies, and problems with intestinal function.

Children and harmful chips

And here it would be worth thinking about children: after all, many parents buy chips just to calm a fussy child, to reward them with chips as a treat, or even completely thoughtlessly - just to buy something.

It is still worth saying that one of the most terrible pictures that we often see in supermarkets is small, two- or three-year-old children holding in their hands packs of chips - a poisonous and slowly killing delicacy that their loving parents bought for them. Can all this really be explained by simple ignorance? It’s more likely just a reluctance to know anything...

There is no need to give chips to small children, much less teach them to eat them: after all, without us, adults, they simply won’t know about chips. As for older children and adults, you should try to wean yourself off the “crunchy fun” and first try to reduce the harm by choosing safer options – for example, puffed chips.

Do not replace food with chips, do not eat them with beer (although this is exactly what advertising calls for), but try to use them, for example, as a side dish for dishes, preferably vegetable ones - this will make it much easier for your stomach to process this “heavy material”.

In general, we sincerely wish you to remember how many truly tasty, healthy and healthy dishes there are in our native Russian cuisine, and then you and your children simply will not know what chips are. Is this food?

Potato chips consistently top the list of healthiest foods. Nutritionists are convinced that the popularity of this type of fast food is the main reason for the “rejuvenation” of many diseases of the liver and gastrointestinal tract.

Paradox: potatoes are a dietary product containing a large amount of vitamins and microelements. Doctors strongly recommend that patients with gastritis and stomach ulcers include mashed potatoes in their diet. But if you briefly fry the same vegetable in a large amount of vegetable oil, doctors unanimously recognize the dish as poison. To understand whether the harm of chips is exaggerated, let’s consider their features.

History of potato chips

Classic potato chips are thin slices of potato, deep-fried and seasoned with salt (sometimes additionally with spices). The dish was invented on August 24, 1853 by George Crum, a restaurant chef in Saratoga (USA).

On that memorable day, the establishment was visited by millionaire Vanderbilt. The important guest drove the chef crazy: Vanderbilt sent back a platter of fried potatoes several times, claiming that the slices were cut too thick. In the end, Kram cut the thinnest, translucent “petals” from the tubers with a razor and deep-fried them. The picky client liked the golden crispy slices.

Soon, “Saratoga Potatoes” became fashionable in the United States, and Mr. Crum, with the support of Vanderbilt, opened a chip factory.

Features of different types of chips

During the 20th century, chips “conquered” the whole world. True, now this delicacy bears little resemblance to the original version.

Today's chips contain so many flavors, dyes and flavoring additives that they are a product of the chemical industry rather than the food industry.

Main types of potato chips:

“crispy potatoes” are thinly sliced fried potatoes with a short shelf life. Due to the absence of dyes in the composition, the product does not have a very presentable appearance, but causes minimal harm to health;
chips made from thin potato slices (smooth or grooved). For production, tubers of genetically modified varieties are used: regular shape, high starch content. To prevent the fried slices from crumbling, the pulp is impregnated with special additives;
chips made from flour: wheat, corn, potato, and genetically modified soy starch. The puree-like mass is rolled out in a thin layer, cut into plates of various shapes and fried. The content of potato flour in a product depends on the integrity of the manufacturer; cheap chips often do not have it at all. Chemical additives give fast food potatoes a pleasant taste;
puffed chips are crispy, fluffy shapes of fried potato mass that are deep-fried for just 10 seconds, so these chips are less harmful than slices and plates that are cooked for about 30 seconds.

Due to the large amount of oil and chemical additives, potato chips from some manufacturers do not smoke, but burn with an open fire

The effect of chips on the human body

The harm of potato chips is due to several factors:

When heated to 160°C, the beneficial fatty acids contained in sunflower oil decompose, forming carcinogenic compounds. Therefore, even homemade fried potatoes are not very healthy. But chip manufacturers do not use sunflower oil for frying, but the cheapest palm oil. To reduce production costs, several batches of chips are fried in the same oil, rather than being thrown out after a single use. As a result, a toxic substance is formed in hot fat - acrolein;
when frying, potato starch decomposes, the ingredients react to form acrylamide, a toxin that adversely affects visual acuity, the condition of the liver, kidneys and nervous system;
with prolonged heating, acrylamide decomposes, and instead of it, glycidamide is formed - a potent carcinogen that disrupts the process of DNA synthesis and promotes mutations. Potato fast food is absolutely contraindicated for pregnant and lactating women;
A flavor enhancer – monosodium glutamate – must be added to the product. The substance acts almost like a drug: to a person accustomed to monosodium glutamate, food without it seems bland and tasteless. But such a person is able to eat much more foods with glutamate than is required to satiate. That’s why there are so many overweight people among fast food lovers;
There is much more salt in chips than in regular dishes. Salt has the property of retaining water in the body, which leads to edema, and increases the secretion of gastric juice. And since dry, completely devoid of vitamins, but high-calorie chips enter the stomach, the likelihood of irritation of the mucous membrane increases;
100 g of chips - 30% fat, that is, two tablespoons.

Regular abuse of chips leads to the deposition of cholesterol plaques in blood vessels, cholecystitis, pancreatitis, gastritis, stomach ulcers, allergies and other serious diseases. Due to the lack of vitamins in the product, brain activity deteriorates and depression develops. A person feels a serious deterioration in their health after just a month of eating chips every day.

How to convince children to give up chips

Because of the original, colorful TV advertising, it is considered normal to enjoy potato fast food while watching a movie or TV show. It is very difficult to explain to a child why you can’t eat chips if everyone around you tells you how delicious it is.

In 2013, an experiment was conducted in one of the Dnipropetrovsk schools: a rat in a living corner was fed exclusively with chips for 20 days. By the end of the experiment, the animal was bald and almost blind. An autopsy showed that the rodent's liver had begun to decompose. After this experience, the entire school abandoned fast food.

Chemical additives that give chips their taste cause allergic reactions and disrupt the functioning of the sebaceous glands. Teenagers who often eat fast food develop a purulent rash, including on the face. For those who squeeze out ulcers, the scars remain for life.

All manufacturers' claims about the benefits of chips do not stand up to criticism. To suppress hunger, it is much easier and healthier to eat an apple, an orange, a handful of raisins, or a bun.

If you really want delicious potato slices, then it’s better to fry them yourself. You can buy store-bought chips every few months, but even a healthy person can cause heartburn.

The benefits of potato chips are very questionable, but the harm is real. In order to preserve beauty and health longer, you need to give up chemical fast food and wean your children off it.

The benefits of chips

Hydrogenated fat, which accumulates in chips, forms a lot of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, which in turn leads to thrombophlebitis, atherosclerosis and a host of other serious diseases. The chips are so heavily saturated with fat that from a small fifty gram bag you will get thirty grams of pure fat. And those who like to eat a big pack get a whole cup of fat “for dessert.”

There are, of course, those manufacturers who make real potato chips from selected potatoes. But even here there is a catch. Potatoes are still genetically modified, like soy starch, because producers need large and even tubers, without a single wormhole, so that the chips turn out beautiful, even, but cheap. And they are fried, like flour products, in cheap fat.

During the process of intense frying, everything useful that could be in these potatoes evaporates, but the harm increases significantly. And first of all, carcinogens appear - dangerous substances that contribute to the appearance of harmful tumors in the human body. A known carcinogen, acrolein, which has carcinogenic and mutational properties, is formed even when all the necessary technologies are followed during frying. To avoid its appearance, you need to change the oil after each preparation; needless to say, this is not done very regularly in production.

Another harmful substance, acrylamide, is formed even by ordinary housewives when using low-quality oil or when the frying pan is heated excessively. And even more so in factory production conditions, because frequent replacement of fat is an unprofitable investment.

Not long ago, another dangerous substance was discovered in chips - glycidamide, which is not only capable of causing cancer, but also destroying the structure of DNA. In addition to everything mentioned, the content of toxins in chips is simply off the charts, including those that have not yet been studied by science. Scientists to this day cannot say exactly what the consumption of all kinds of E-additives contained in delicious chips can lead to.

Air chips

Puffed chips today rank last in terms of toxin content, as they are fried for only ten seconds. However, carcinogens are formed here too, and no one has canceled GM potatoes. It is known that it takes five kilograms of potatoes to prepare one kilogram of chips, so it is more profitable to use special mixtures.

The popular Pringles chips contain only 40% potatoes, thanks to which the owner of the company even got rid of paying a specific tax. After all, these smooth, crispy slices are considered a product made from yeast dough, and not potato chips. But the technology for preparing Pringles differs little from their closest relatives in rustling bags.

On the packages of chips, in bright letters it says: with onions, with cheese, with sour cream, with red caviar - you won’t find any flavors! Recently, however, the law has prohibited misleading people, and manufacturers have begun to tactfully indicate the “taste” of this and that, but the consumer is of little interest in this, because the chicken and dill on the packages look so appetizing, just like the real thing, and what else do you need? to a hungry person who pops into the store during his lunch break?

And sometimes you have to pay for such weaknesses with your own health. It’s rare now to meet a potato chip lover without gastritis, heartburn and other “delights” associated with gastrointestinal diseases.

And if we talk about the high salt content in this product, then metabolic disorders, heart disease and impaired bone tissue formation immediately come to mind.

Harm and contraindications

Children are addicted natures, and they are fond of sweets, fast food and, of course, chips. And they most often take their example from their parents. Many adults, without thinking about the consequences, shove bags of chips at their kids so that they can quickly fall behind and give them the opportunity to go about their business. And they forget that the main job of parents is to take care of the health of their children.

There is nothing worse than the picture when a two-year-old toddler, with tears in his eyes, begs his mother to buy him chips. And she buys her child this delicacy, which not only causes addiction in the baby, it slowly kills him!

Remember that such products are strictly contraindicated for small children! There is no need to accustom them to this diet; you should not eat chips in front of them. If they don’t know about the existence of such “goodies”, then they won’t ask for them. If your child has already become acquainted with chips and loves them, you need to urgently take action. For starters, at least switch to puffed chips, this is considered a safer option. And best of all, stop eating chips yourself, don’t snack on them, don’t take them with beer. For those who cannot live without chips, it is better to eat them as a side dish for vegetable dishes, so it will be easier for the stomach to cope with the “treat”.

Is a bag of chips more valuable to you than a slim waist or a healthy stomach for your child? Remember how many delicious and healthy dishes there are. And then you won’t have to replace real tasty and healthy products with a cheap fake in the form of oily potato flakes with cheap flavors.

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