Everybody loves potato chips
or potato crisps or wafers [as we call them in India]. Not many people know how
they came to be invented. It’s an interesting story.
In the summer of 1853,
Native American George Crum was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in
Saratoga Springs, New York. One dinner guest found Crum's French fries too
thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum decided to rile the guest by
producing fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork. The plan backfired.
The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners
began requesting Crum's potato chips.
Thus, was born the wafer as
we know it today. It’s a great snack, kids love it, adults love it, eating a
bowl of wafers with a cold beer is one of life’s simpler pleasures for me.
Lays Classic - Fried wafers |
According to many, wafers
make you fat. In fact, they say everything fried is bad as it makes you fat and
clogs your arteries. How truly horrible that is. Who wants to be fat, we all
want to be slim and sexy. So, to meet this demand, our wafer manufacturers
developed a brand new product, “baked wafers”. Now you can eat to your heart’s
content and not get fat. Life is wonderful again.
Needless to say, PepsiCo has
launched baked wafers in India. To help sell these baked wafers they have an
advertising campaign. It has good looking slim 20 something models literally devouring,
as in stuffing their faces, these delicious baked wafers. Have a look at
the commercial if you have not seen it. The
new wafers have 50% less fat. Interesting, I thought, and went out to buy a
packet of both Lays Classic [the horrible fried stuff] in `American Style Cream
& Onion’ flavour and the new Lays Baked in `Cream, Herb & Onion’ flavour
with 50% less fat than fried wafers, which, apparently, I could eat to gay
abandon.
The new baked wafers |
Here is what I found.
The packet of Lays Classic
has a miserly 60 grams of wafers and costs Rs 20/-. If my mathematics is
correct this means that a kilo of wafers should cost you a staggering Rs. 333/-.
Be that as it may. That is not the point I wish to make. A quick glance of the
ingredients reveals basically 3 ingredients, potato, oil and flavours such as salt
sugar and condiments. As you know, ingredients have to be listed in descending
order of quantity so the biggest quantity is listed first and the smallest
quantity last. So Lays Classic primarily has potato and oil. Nothing wrong with
this. What more could you expect from a potato wafer?
Ingredients in fried wafers |
Price of fried wafers |
The packet of Lays baked
weighs in at a slightly more substantial 67 grams and costs Rs. 30/- . Once
again, if my mathematics is correct this means that a kilo of wafers should
cost you an eye popping Rs. 447/-. The ingredients are indeed strange. Baked
potato wafers contain, from highest to lowest, 47% potato flakes, then wheat
flour, then starch then oil and lastly all the flavourings and condiments. Potato
wafers and wheat flour? Are you eating a wafer or a chapatti? Is this really
what you wanted to buy? No fresh potato in baked potato wafers, no sir, just
some choice dry potato flakes mixed with wheat flour, sounds delicious? Not to
me!
Ingredients of baked wafers |
Price of baked wafers |
Now the most interesting
part. How much healthier is a baked wafer than a fried wafer. To determine this you need to understand a
couple of concepts. Calories are what give us energy. Therefore, if you eat more
calories than you expend, you put on weight. Calories are found in fat, in
protein and in carbohydrates. They may be many more calories in a given
quantity of fat as opposed to a comparable quantity of carbohydrates. So, if
you want to lose weight you need to expend more calories than you ingest.
However, saying that baked wafers have 50% less fat than fried wafers and
thereby implying or suggesting that eating baked wafers is somehow at least
twice as healthy is less unhealthy or is a huge leap of faith. This kind of statement, though technically correct, is, according to me, grossly misleading.
Do have a careful look at
the nutrition information. 100 grams of fried wafers contain 549 calories and
34 grams of fat. 100 grams of baked wafers contain marginally less calories
i.e. 459 and, yes, half the fat at just 15.4 grams. Here lies the rub. Even though
you have half the fat, you do not have half the calories. You have just 16%
less calories, so, you are just fooling yourself by eating baked wafers and thinking that by eating them you are consuming have the calories, thus they are not fattening. It must
be said that yes, you do consume half the fat but by no stretch of imagination
is the calorific value 50% less.
Fried wafers 34 grams fat 549 calories |
Baked wafers 15.4 grams fat 459 calories |
If you ask me, PepsiCo are
technically correct, the baked wafers do have 50% less fat. Where there is a
lot of stuff left unsaid is that (i) just because baked wafers have 50% less fat it does not automatically follow that baked wafers do not have 50% less calories, though PepsiCo would like you to believe that, and (ii) baked wafers are not fresh potato but some hybrid product conceived in
a lab which is a mix of potato flakes and wheat.
Stick with real fried potato
wafers. Just eat a few less.