They are essential at aperitif time. Essential in front of football matches and TV series. They go perfectly with guacamole, tartar sauce, old-fashioned mustard and Mexican sauce… chips, we love it.
Faced with the obvious, researchers from Deakin University (Australia – source) asked themselves this question – a bit eccentric, we grant you: why do we like crisps so much? To find out, they conducted an experiment with 48 volunteers (men and women with different profiles), to whom they presented several kinds of crisps, with various flavors and made according to different recipes.
Result: the scientists realized that the more a food was salty, the more it was addictive – the researchers also observed an increase in consumption of 11% on average when the crisps were very salty.
Cardiovascular and bone disorders
Problem: theexcess salt is bad for health. If the World Health Organization recommends about 5 grams of NaCl (the chemical formula of salt) per day, in France, we are used to swallowing 8 grams daily, and some people even regularly go up to 12 g/day!
At the level of the body, an overconsumption of salt can cause or aggravate certain cardiovascular disorders and certain chronic diseases: high blood pressure, heart failure, diabetes… In addition, salt is also implicated in the development of osteoporosis and certain bone disorders. Not to mention that crisps are generally very greasy: thus, in May 2013, a Harvard Medical School study calculated that a packet of crisps was equivalent to 5 liters of oil. Incredible !
What can you substitute for salted chips? Why not opt for fruit or vegetable crisps ? The recipe is very simple: it involves cutting very thin slices of our favorite foods (apples, carrots, tomatoes) and leaving them to dehydrate in the oven at 60°C for several hours. You can also bet on dips (crunchy mini-vegetables) with a sauce based on 0% fat cottage cheese: light and healthy!
