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| The crisps are all right | The crisps are all right |
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| Earlier this week I asked what well-loved foods people loathed. There were, predictably, plenty of mushrooms and coriander, and even some chips. But in more than 850 comments, there was only one person who dissed crisps. This comes as no surprise. If we are no longer a nation of shopkeepers, what we most certainly remain is a nation of crisp-eaters. | Earlier this week I asked what well-loved foods people loathed. There were, predictably, plenty of mushrooms and coriander, and even some chips. But in more than 850 comments, there was only one person who dissed crisps. This comes as no surprise. If we are no longer a nation of shopkeepers, what we most certainly remain is a nation of crisp-eaters. |
| This was confirmed by a YouGov poll this week, which found that a third of our children eat crisps every day. A digest: 58% of 8- to 15-year-olds snack on healthy titbits – fruits, rice cakes, seeds – while 89% nosh on "standard" snacks, such as crisps, confectionery, biscuits and cakes. Confectionery squashes fruit by a 9% margin, while 70% of 8- to 15-year-olds snack at least once a day. | This was confirmed by a YouGov poll this week, which found that a third of our children eat crisps every day. A digest: 58% of 8- to 15-year-olds snack on healthy titbits – fruits, rice cakes, seeds – while 89% nosh on "standard" snacks, such as crisps, confectionery, biscuits and cakes. Confectionery squashes fruit by a 9% margin, while 70% of 8- to 15-year-olds snack at least once a day. |
| But crisps are the headline, thanks to the finding that almost two thirds of our children devour them regularly. And who can blame them? There is something entirely irresistible about the humble crisp, a purity rivalled by few, if any, other snacks. What could ever replace the heartening packet of salt and vinegar lying open on the pub table, the rustling bag atop the packed lunch (that never makes it past elevenses), the comforting and fast-decreasing weight of a pack of gossamer cheese and onion in the palm? | But crisps are the headline, thanks to the finding that almost two thirds of our children devour them regularly. And who can blame them? There is something entirely irresistible about the humble crisp, a purity rivalled by few, if any, other snacks. What could ever replace the heartening packet of salt and vinegar lying open on the pub table, the rustling bag atop the packed lunch (that never makes it past elevenses), the comforting and fast-decreasing weight of a pack of gossamer cheese and onion in the palm? |
| It began, or so the story goes, with a chef in Saratoga Springs called George Crum. A customer complained that his French fries weren't crispy enough and so Crum, in exasperation, sliced a potato paper-thin, hoyed it in some hot oil, salted the hell out of the results and served them to the delighted recipient. Hello crisps. (The tale is widely disputed and probably not entirely true, but it is Easter after all.) | It began, or so the story goes, with a chef in Saratoga Springs called George Crum. A customer complained that his French fries weren't crispy enough and so Crum, in exasperation, sliced a potato paper-thin, hoyed it in some hot oil, salted the hell out of the results and served them to the delighted recipient. Hello crisps. (The tale is widely disputed and probably not entirely true, but it is Easter after all.) |
| A jog through what happened between then and now should probably take in plenty of sepia, brown paper bags, little blue sachets of salt, Golden Wonder, and Gary Lineker, arriving at today, with each of us eating an average of 150 packets of crisps a year. A fine effort I'm sure you'll agree. Some years ago the British Heart Foundation reckoned this to mean we – or our children – were therefore guzzling a full five litres of cooking oil per annum. This is roughly accurate for a child eating a large bag of crisps every day, though, as Charlie Brooker pointed out at the time, doesn't necessarily tally up to mean this is bad for your health. | |
| And this is the big question. Will eating a bag of crisps every day make you fat? At a time when evidence is increasingly stacking up against high sugar diets, the demonised potato chip seems less egregious. But crisps are just one (splendid) treat amid many in this snack-happy country. As Wednesday's poll shows, 63% of kids are eating sweets between meals, and you don't need a maths degree, nor indeed a child, to tell you that this is in addition to crisps, not instead of them. | And this is the big question. Will eating a bag of crisps every day make you fat? At a time when evidence is increasingly stacking up against high sugar diets, the demonised potato chip seems less egregious. But crisps are just one (splendid) treat amid many in this snack-happy country. As Wednesday's poll shows, 63% of kids are eating sweets between meals, and you don't need a maths degree, nor indeed a child, to tell you that this is in addition to crisps, not instead of them. |
| There is perhaps a danger of getting in a muddle over class implications here, but with middle-class children becoming tubbier than their working-class mates, any debate over whether eating Walkers causes more corpulence than Kettle Chips is perhaps a red herring. | There is perhaps a danger of getting in a muddle over class implications here, but with middle-class children becoming tubbier than their working-class mates, any debate over whether eating Walkers causes more corpulence than Kettle Chips is perhaps a red herring. |
| So what do polls like this one tell us? Nothing new, I suspect. The sun rarely sets on a day in which we are not told that we eat too much and drink too much. If we are too fat then it is our lifestyles that are to blame. Don't take it out on the crisp. | So what do polls like this one tell us? Nothing new, I suspect. The sun rarely sets on a day in which we are not told that we eat too much and drink too much. If we are too fat then it is our lifestyles that are to blame. Don't take it out on the crisp. |