Potato Crisps
Food · Pantry & Condiment · Food, Typed Supps
A third fat by weight — and genuinely hard to stop eating, by design.
Stage by stage
- Frying (Oil uptake): Water is driven out of thin slices and oil takes its place, giving 33 g fat per 100 g.
- Dissolution (Oral cavity): They dissolve fast, so volume cues resolve before the energy is registered.
- Sodium (Extracellular fluid): Around 592 mg per 100 g, contributing to palatability and continued eating.
- Potassium (Circulation): The underlying potato still supplies genuinely high potassium.
Timing
No timing effect. Portion size is where the entire variance sits.
Time to effect
- Same day: Sodium load is immediate.
- Years: Cohort studies link habitual intake to gradual weight gain.
Allergens
None of the fourteen major allergens. May contain: Gluten, Milk, Soya, Sulphites. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Low-FODMAP. Depends on the product: Gluten-free.
Satiety
91 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Measured by Holt et al. (1995).
Environmental footprint
0.5 kg CO2e and 59 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Potatoes" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Cheap — roughly £1.4 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 511
- Protein: 6g
- Carbohydrate: 45.8g
- of which sugars: 0.9g
- Fat: 33.3g
- of which saturated: 7.5g
- Fibre: 3.2g
- Sodium: 592mg
Food vs. supplement
The same potato baked instead of fried has roughly a quarter of the energy density — almost all the difference is absorbed oil, not anything about the vegetable.
Kitchen tip
Portion into a bowl rather than eating from the bag — package size predicts how much gets eaten more reliably than hunger does.
Common myth
“Baked crisps are the healthy version.” In reality: They genuinely cut the fat, which is a real difference. But they usually carry similar sodium, similar energy density per gram, and the same engineered texture that makes the packet easy to finish — the mechanism that drives overeating is largely intact.
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