Abandon Chip!
Why a claim to avoid chips just isn't right
Unfortunately, there are people in this world that don’t like chips. I mean it is totally okay, I get it, everyone has their own things they do and don’t like and it’s not my place to judge. But to go as far as to denounce chips and try to make other people stop eating them as well… That’s where I draw the line.
So I was just minding my own business when I stumbled upon this video titled “When you watch this video, you will not eat chips again.” Now my first thought was that it was a video about how chips are made and they twisted it to be gross, or a video that made them look like the most unhealthy snack in the world. What I found though, was this:
As you can see by the video, this person seems to be trying to tell people that they need to fight the urge to eat chips (which I obviously disagree with) and they list three reasons why:
1. A Sea of Fat
I think I see what they’re trying to go for in this part, but it really just doesn’t land or make much sense at all. It would seem they are trying to go after the fact that chips are unhealthy (which I won’t necessarily argue). That being said, eating a few chips here and there is not going to have much of an impact on your health. If you were to eat an entire family sized bag for a meal, or as your only food, then that’s a different story, but chips as a snack aren’t going to ruin you.
“the amount of fat contained in potato chips reaches up to a percentage of 34%, which is a third of the bag consumed.”
Go ahead, read it again. It definitely took me a few rereads to make even some sense of it. I’m sure they aren’t trying to say that the amount of fat in a bag of chips is 34% of the fat in a bag of chips, but that’s what it sounds like. This is only the first point they’ve given and I already am lost, I wish I could ask them what they meant.
2. Bad Oils
I’m glad this paragraph was a lot easier to understand, however it doesn’t seem to be true. According to the ingredients on the backs of the chip bags that I have checked, the only oils being used are vegetable oil, corn, canola, and/or sunflower oil. Along with that, the FDA makes many rules and regulations for what needs to be on nutrition labels such as ingredients used. I don’t think that these chips would be allowed to sell if they were found using ingredients that weren’t mentioned.
Then after this, they say
“However, both are considered to be of little benefit to health.”
If that’s the case, why did they even bother bringing up the oils? They continue by saying something about how 52% of products get a bad note when it comes to saturated and trans fats. However, without being able to see this study they are referring to, it is hard to know exactly what they mean by this.
3. An Alternative
Now I’ll be honest, I 100% think that lunch boxes are key, just not the way this video is claiming. I remember the days where I would carry around my lunch box in middle school, then sit down to eat lunch and I would pull out my delicious bag of chips. Lunch boxes are a key, a key for keeping your chips safe. So, if you’re looking for a good chip carrier, lunch boxes are a good choice. Sure, you could carry a lunch box with fruit in it if you really wanted to, but knowing how impractical carrying a lunch box can be, it doesn’t seem like the greatest alternative.
They then go on to say that you should just carry around healthy foods that you can then resort to in your moments of weakness. Which, yeah, if you’re trying to eat healthier that is definitely a good idea, but like I said earlier on, chips aren’t going to have too much impact on your health as long as you aren’t eating them in large amounts.
Closing
There were also a few general things that I thought were either odd or just didn’t make sense with this argument. The first being that the voice in the video, which was clearly computer generated made the already hard to read text even harder for me to understand. I’m very unsure as to whether this was just poorly written, or possibly translated from another language or something. The script just read very odd.
Also, each time they talked about their source for the facts, they told who it was, but there was no way of checking that information to see the data. Finally, I just really didn’t understand the story they began the video with. Whether that’s because I had never been in a similar situation or something else entirely, I’m not really sure.
As a (self-proclaimed) eater of chips (and writer of a cool newsletter about them), I feel that this video is misrepresenting chips. Although perhaps they meant well, they told more than 261 thousand people they should avoid chips. And honestly, the only way to make it feel right would be for me to go eat some of my favorite Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles. So please, stop denouncing chips, and start enjoying them instead.
And in the wise words of Virginia Wade,
“It’s only when it comes to Crunch Time that people’s true character comes out.”
It's so irritating when people act like you can't eat a single unhealthy food or your entire diet will be ruined. A healthy lifestyle is just practicing balance, between healthy foods and not-so-heathy foods (although as someone who lives mainly off of ramen and takeout I'm really not one to talk). When you demonize all unhealthy food, you're more likely to avoid it to the point that you can't anymore, and then eat way too much. Your takedown of this person's point is spot on.
It's true that the video made little sense. They started with a huge claim that you will never eat chips again but then didn't give much information that was not already public knowledge. Most of it was health facts that everyone knew, which was that eating chips isn't that nutritious. I'm sure it was hard to find an anti-chip video, because who doesn't eat chips every once in a while.