Potatoes that only kill hunger and do not nourish

Open a bag of potato chips. With your hands, it's very easy: you only need your thumbs and index fingers. With these two fingers on each hand, pinch and stretch the bag in opposite directions. And then you'll hear the sound: metallic, unmistakable. It's not shrill, but a nice, crunchy click-click. And the adjective is not in vain: if you opened the bag with your eyes closed, you would know perfectly well that you'll find potato chips inside. The day the food industry thought about increasing the sale of potato chips, “marketing specialists intuited that it would make sense to make the sound of the packaging congruent with the sensory properties of the content,” explains psychologist Charles Spence in the book GastroPhysics. The Science of Food (Paidós). It makes sense: if the food industry wanted to sell crunchy potato chips, the kind that make a crunch-crunch sound when you bite them, the packaging had to make the same sound, because that way all the body's senses prepare to intuit that what they are about to eat is a godsend.

But there was a brand of chips that realized they had to do something, because they sold their potato chips, all identical and exact, in a metal tin. I'm referring to the Pringles brand, which studied how it could also apply the crunch-crunch theory: “Pringles has strived to enhance the sound of the metallic foil that seals their containers.” And all this because, “the louder the noise the bag or package makes when we open it, the crunchier we believe the potato chips inside are”.

They kill hunger, but don't nourish

All of this is part of the food industry's tricks, which it's good for us to be aware of, because in reality, potato chips are a greasy food. As they come out of the ground, cooked in a healthy way (steamed, boiled, stewed), they provide complex carbohydrates, which means the body gets energy for longer than simple carbohydrates (sugars). If we combine these steamed or boiled potatoes with vegetables or legumes, as we've done all our lives at home, then the combination makes a more complete meal. Boiled potato with green beans, a dish that chef Jordi Vilà successfully prepares every day both on the tasting menu and at the Alkostat restaurant, is one of the best examples we can give.

However, all of this changes when potatoes are fried at high temperatures and we get chips, which is related to the dreaded acrylamide, linked to diseases. Furthermore, they don't nourish, but merely kill hunger. And they are often linked to high contents of salt and colorants, as is the case with some varieties (think, for example, of orange-colored chips). Luckily, at home they are not present in all meals, as is the case in other countries, where children even take them to school for breakfast. They should be an occasional food, an exception. And when we eat, when we open a bag, we should be aware that the food industry knows how to seduce us with all our senses.