warning ~ walkers crisps and other snack foods kill kids (Kids in the Kitchen)

Member Name: cabletow

Product:	Kids in the Kitchen
Date:	27/04/02 (424 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: taste, ease

Disadvantages: cancer, diabetes, heart attacks

I know this is not really the place for this opinion. But I wanted to warn parents about some pitfalls with Walker's crisps and other snack foods. When Kids go to the kitchen 9 times out of 10 they emerge with a snack of some sort. I found this out about crisps, Coke and other carbo snack treats.

So how do I write something that will grab your attention about the nation's favourite potato snack. They are really really bad for you. Sacrilege you all yell. Not our favourite snack. Not the ones that Gary Lineker, the paragon of all that is good and nice sells surely? Well, yes they are really really bad for you.

I am not talking about the 133 calories per packet of 25g. I am not talking about the strange and varied chemical flavours that they add to make them taste so good. Although, I could point out that the only smoky bacon that smoky bacon flavour comes into contact with is what ever is on the breath of one of the line workers in the Walkers factory that morning. You see it is all to do with organic chemistry, otherwise known as aromatic hydrocarbon development. You take nasty bits of plastic blend them under certain heat conditions and behold you get a substance that smells and tastes of smoky bacon. Also it is not the salt. Although there is enough salt in a packet of crisps to send your blood pressure up by about 2mm of mercury. No it is the carbohydrate.

Carbohydrate? You ask. Well yes. You then will say that I have already excluded the calories. Yes that is right. Carbohydrate in this form is a killer in two ways.

1) When carbohydrate remnants are heated in fat to certain temperatures, as they are in crisps, they turn into a carcinogenic compound. A substance that causes cancer. This is found at levels 400 times the recommended maximum daily dose in one packet of 25g crisps. It is thought that these carcinogens cause bowel and throat cancer and snacks such as crisps may account for the fourfold rise in Bowel cancer i
ncidence we have seen in the last 20 years. Think on that.
2) The second way in which Walkers crisps may kill is due to the simplicity of these carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates such as potato fragments heated in hydrogenated oil are readily broken down into glucose by the body. This causes your pancreas to release a load of insulin. The sugar is stored and then you suffer a hypo. This makes you hungry for more, and this is the reason why one bag is never enough. So what. Well the insulin release depletes the pancreas, the sugar levels poison the little cells that release the insulin and the Free fatty acids that the crisp also releases causes your body to be less sensitive to insulin so you have to release more. A viscous circle then, I hear you say. Yes one that ultimately ends up as diabetes. Simple sugar snacks such as crisps cause the increasing incidence of type two diabetes. We have just seen the first cases in children and the consequences are devastating to those people.

Cabletow is nothing but a moaning killjoy isn't he. My old man used to say that life was worth living and everything is OK as long as everything is taken in moderation. Latest medical research sometimes seems to rebuke this, and Walker's crisps are the latest killer highlighted by the press. I am sure that those of you who eat this stuff by the truckload will start to see your health suffer. But a packet a day cannot be too harmful can it. It would seem that this is a risk you have to take. If the politically correct police take crisps to heart as much as smoking or Coca-Cola you may well see an anti crisp league develop because of its cancer causing features. In the meantime however you have to eat and a little of what you enjoy seems fair enough. The message I am trying to impart is be hard on yourself and learn to say no to that all appealing second packet. Delicious as they may be.

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