The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is mounting a campaign to educate Britons about "hidden salt, fat and sugar in common foods" to give people some perspective on the foods that they are putting into their bodies and to try to encourage healthy eating habits. Their focus, for the moment, is on crisps. A survey done by the BHF revealed that 49% of children from 8-15 ate at least one package of chips (crisps) each day, and 20% ate two or more. They are consuming roughly 5-liters of cooking oil every year at that rate, or about 1 1/3 gallons.
Crisp-addiction isn't limited to kids, though. As a whole, the nation consumes "a tonne of crisps every three minutes, enough to fill an Olympic size swimming pool every 14 hours." Using the number provided by the BHF, which says that the average 1.2-oz packet of chips has 2.5-tsp of oil, there are about 950-gallons of cooking oil consumed for every tonne (2,204 lbs) of crisps, a massive amount over any length of time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-27-2006 @ 3:09AM
Mary said...
But crisps are delicious. Got to watch my diet even more.
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9-27-2006 @ 5:27AM
James said...
I usually eat a packet every weekday for lunch i think i will look for some alternative. Great Blog.
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9-27-2006 @ 10:24PM
Baron said...
Since when was the salt, fat and sugar hidden in these foods? I will admit I didn't read the linking blog, only this one, but unless they do things different over there, I think we have had food labeling here for as long as I remember. There was a period that I lived on potato chips, french fries, and beef jerky when I was young b/c everything else just made me want to get sick!
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9-28-2006 @ 7:06AM
Dr. Electro said...
I was born before food labeling in the US. Heck, I was born before Rock-n-Roll music! We ate all the starchy foods, the fried foods, the gravies and sauces made with all kinds of artery-clogging gunk and never had a clue what was killing us.
On the other hand, I lived on a dairy foarm as a kid and worked off every calorie I could jam into my starving, young body. Even at that, I had it easier than previous generations. If people today had to work as hard as my grandparents' generation did, it wouldn't make nearly as much difference what we ate. We would still all be hungry!
Enter the modern age of convenience and leisure. These days we have to make a concerted effort to get the exercise we need, with very few exceptions. Thanks to food labeling, we have the information at a glance that SHOULD help us to choose wisely. The hidden salt, fat and sugar are still in there, though. You have to read the ingredient list to decipher what they have substituted for lard and sugar cane.
Things like gum sorbitol and sugar alcohols get into foods and are not listed in the handy, easy-to-read chart that lists "sugars." That little panel is restricted to refined white sugar only. The other dangers are disguised under ingredient names that sound more innocuous than they are. At least the Trans-Fatty Acids (transfats) are out from under the covers.
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