The Unhealthiest Health Food
I myself, a self-proclaimed health nut, used to eat family-sized bags at a time of tortilla chips. Especially the multi-color ones from Trader Joe’s labeled “veggie” and containing flax seeds. Talk about a “heath-halo”- a marketing term for when a label’s words and graphics misleadingly imply a healthy product inside but the label is the only healthy thing about it.
So even though tortilla chips are a highly processed, greasy, fried food, most customers see multi-color chips and think “More nutrients!” and flax seeds and think “More fiber!” But junk food with extra vitamins is still junk food.
So why do we feel less guilty buying the tortilla chips than potato chips or other snack foods?
In my personal experience- and this is embarrassing to admit as a trained chef of many years- I think I always assumed they were baked, unlike potato chips which I always knew were fried. When finally one day, years ago, I tried making my own corn chips by toasting (baking) plain, soft corn tortillas in the oven, I quickly noticed the stark difference in texture. The end product was actually still quite tasty but not nearly as mindlessly addictive and enjoyable. I recommend you try it yourself. I should have known from the flaky, perfectly crunchy, crispy, airy texture that the store bought chips were fried and therefore too good to be true. But wishful thinking can be very powerful.
(Another theory I have is that tortilla chips often come free in restaurants and take-out spots- and so our subconscious rationalizes that free can’t be bad.)
What exactly is so unhealthy about them?
As I mentioned above, deep frying is, unfortunately, one of the unhealthiest cooking techniques there is. Cooking of any kind, no matter how gentle, breaks down nutrients. But certain cooking methods, typically those involving extremely high temperatures, not only break down vitamins and other health benefits, but actually create new properties that are highly destructive to the human body. The main one when it comes to frying is acrylamide- a carcinogenic (i.e. cancer-causing) molecule that are produced when starches are browned, i.e. what gives chips and other fried snacks their toasty flavor and color and unbeatable combo of crunch and airy-ness.
Deep frying works so well because oil and water don’t mix so when a food is submerged in hot fat, no moisture can get in to make it even somewhat soggy or soft- it’s crunch city all the way. As a chef and human who likes to eat, I fully admit that no other cooking technique comes close to what deep frying can create. This news sucks. But the facts are the facts.
But what if they’re Organic and Gluten-Free?!
Ask yourself: would you prefer organic poison to conventional poison? Gluten-free poison instead of gluten-containing poison? If the main ingredient is inherently unhealthy, any further qualifications don’t make it healthier.
These two distinctions on a bag of fried snack food are particularly irrelevant and deceptive (another health-halo) for a few reasons:
- When organic corn and organic oil are subjected to the high heat of deep frying, any benefits from them being organic (or a vegetable or a healthy fat) are destroyed, and/or completely outweighed by the unhealthy byproducts of frying.
- Corn is a naturally gluten free food so to imply that a bag of corn chips had the gluten removed, or is unique for not containing gluten, or would normally contain gluten, is misleading or, at the very least, unnecessary.
- Gluten is not necessarily unhealthy/something everyone should avoid- and as someone who is gluten-intolerant, I’d rather eat a piece of gluten-containing sourdough bread, for example, than gluten-free junk food.
Wait, there’s more
Even if these chips weren’t fried, you’d need to replace the oil itself that is used to make them too.
Almost all chips these days (potato, corn, sweet potato, lentil, rice, you name it) are made using vegetable oil- or canola, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, rapeseed, etc- they’re all in the same category- which, heated or not, are not good for us either.
Vegetable oils are comprised of both omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids which, although essential to humans, are not present here in the ideal ratio. Too much 6 and not enough 3 is now being linked to many of the inflammatory, chronic diseases of today. (This is an oversimplification but you can read more here and here.)
I personally avoid consuming these oils at all costs and, in doing so, I inherently avoid almost all processed foods. It is not a coincidence that the two coincide. Vegetable oils are super cheap, neutral-tasting and a great preservative to extend shelf life- a manufacturer’s dream- and the human body’s nightmare.
