Avocado Oil is a Scam

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I don’t give a shit. I fucking love chips. I could not live without potato chips. When I lived in Barcelona for a month I ate Ruffle brand chips and gelato for breakfast everyday on my way to Barceloneta, the closest beach. Everyday. I was in Spain. I could have eaten anything and I carried around a bag of Ruffles with me everywhere I went.

I still can’t eat a sandwich without a side of chips. Slices of apple won’t help. Maybe a pickle, but I’d rather eat a pickle and chips. Actually, I don’t even like sandwiches that much, but we can talk about that later.

When I’m hungover there’s no cure like chips and a Coke. I can only sub chips’ grease with fries, but if I’m at home without a fryer, chips are the only thing that truly makes me feel better. Yes, even over eggs.

My only problem — the chip addiction not being the problem — is I only like plain chips. I love ruffled/ridged chips, but that’s the only texture I can handle. I hate kettle. I hate pretty much all flavors. I hate BBQ and any other chip that would leave weird orangeness on my fingertips (and I hated this as a kid too). At parties I can snack on some other flavors, but only out of desperation. Salt and pepper is okay, as is sour cream and onion and shockingly, salt and vinegar. But that’s about it. It’s weird that I love chips so much, love so very much, but only in a very limited way.

Yesterday I had an intense craving for avocado. I didn’t get my act together to make my lunch (loooong Eagles game) so I really wanted a sandwich with avocado in it. I went to this generic Boar’s head sponsored deli and ordered a veggie sandwich: veggie cream cheese, sprouts, avocado, cucumbers, tomato (I removed those mealy slices), red onion and swiss cheese on rosemary focaccia. Definitely not enough avocado. But I figured that beforehand and picked up Kettle Style Avocado Oil Potato Chips with Sea Salt.

I knew they wouldn’t taste like avocado, but I was kinda secretly hoping they would. There were no regular chips in sight so instead of weird dill flavored Route 11 chips I went for the avocado oil chips.

They were kettle cooked, so to start I didn’t love the texture, but they weren’t as hard as some other kettle brands. There was plenty of salt. And maybe just a tinge of sweetness. Could that have been the avocado coming through? My lord I’m such a sucker for avocado. Anyway, even though I paid triple for that bag, I was probably eating chips that were slightly better for me.

From Good Health Natural Foods:

Avocado Potato Chips
World’s First Avocado Oil Potato Chip

This is the first time that avocado oil has been used to cook potato chips, resulting in robust flavor and 30% less fat than traditionally cooked chips. Ranked by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most nutritious fruit, avocados offer a wealth of health and beauty benefits. Utilizing avocado’s nutritious properties, avocado oil is revolutionizing the potato chip industry as a healthy alternative to conventional cooking oils. It contains a high concentration of vitamins and minerals, along with monounsaturated fats that help reduce LDL cholesterol. Good Health® Natural Products has developed proprietary technology to kettle cook potato chips with avocado oil without transferring high fat content.

Not that I give a shit. I will eat chips no matter what. Tax me. Do it. I will still eat them when I need them. But only when I need them.

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14 comments

  • Summer November 17, 2009  

    Yes! Thank you for admitting to your love of potato chips. I too am addicted to potato chips, to the extent that I’ll only rarely let myself buy them, for fear I’ll inhale an entire family-size bag in one sitting. (I totally could.)

    Where we differ is that I love flavored chips. Sour cream and onion is my favorite, but since I’ve discovered my lactose intolerance/dairy allergy/lactardedness, they’re obviously off my menu. But what truly surprised me is that just about every variety of flavored chips contains milk powder! You wouldn’t think that salt n’ pepper or barbecue flavored chips would contain milk, but they do. The only flavored chips I can now eat are certain brands of salt n’ vinegar chips, which is unfortunate, because if I eat too many, the combination of salt and acid will make me feel like my lips have been ripped off.

    Thus I am a reluctant convert to plain potato chips. When I’m really craving extra flavor, I’ll make my very fancy, very healthy dairy-free curry dip to go with it, which consists of mayonnaise mixed with curry powder. (My worship of mayonnaise is a topic for another day.)

  • Natalie Sztern November 17, 2009  

    honey, when its chips i crave and if i can find them on a one store search there is no other chip than a Solea bag of chips…ruffles is also my second in line

  • Alex November 17, 2009  

    I also love potato chips, although LAST on my list is Ruffles, I’m sad to say, and FIRST is kettle. I hope we can still be friends.

  • BS November 17, 2009  

    I wish companies would stop trying to come up with “healthier” potato chips. There will never be a healthy potato chip — the ones that are nominally healthy taste so bad they don’t deserve to be called potato chips. Let’s just recognize that they’re an unhealthy food and maybe try not to eat them every day. For example, having the same problem as Summer (unsettling capacity to eat a jumbo bag by myself in one sitting), I only allow myself to buy the smallest size bag of chips available — I may be wasting money and packaging, but it’s just necessary.

  • erica November 17, 2009  

    i eat Tim’s Cascade chips for breakfast a LOT. Ruffles; pfffft. i will eat Ruffles or Lays, but i like my chip to lacerate the roof of my mouth if i insert it wrong. and also not be so goddamn salty, which is also a factor in the Tim’s addiction as they have a low salt version. Chip rant OVER.

  • Nick November 17, 2009  

    I want companies to go the other way. Screw health. I want them to be proud of their unhealthy product.

    What I’m asking for here is chips cooked in bacon fat.

  • miked November 17, 2009  

    i’m appalled by your barcelona diet. Also, I note that you carefully say you ate ruffles for breakfast “every day”–since you probably never had breakfast in the morning unless you’d been up all night (and that’s not really breakfast then).

    p.s., and as if I haven’t taunted you enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDiCxhtGMhc

  • BS's Mom November 18, 2009  

    Tayto anyone?

  • Ailbhe November 19, 2009  

    Tayto is indeed the king of crisps and by that I mean chips. In fact, Mr. Tayto has just published a memoir ‘The Man Inside the Jacket’ … https://www.taytocrisps.ie/shop/default.asp It’s on the bestseller list – what a country!

  • Shortie K December 9, 2009  

    Not sure how this supports the notion that “avocado oil is a scam.” When I clicked on this link, I thought you’d disproved the manufacturer’s claims about avocado oil. Sounds instead like you just wanted more of the taste to come thru on the chips?

  • Frank June 17, 2011  

    You are a moron. They taste like regular potato chips — actually awesome ones. Not avocados. That’s the point. They are healthier you fattie that doesn’t care about what you eat.

  • David September 6, 2012  

    Regardless of health benefits, these Avocado Oil p-chips are amazing!!! I was going to Marshalls because they’re the only place I could find selling them. No, they don’t taste like avocado, nor are they supposed to.

    These chips have a very crunchy kettle texture but with a pleasurable subtle creamy finish. (May sound gross but it’s really not.) I was so fascinated with these chips, I went out and found some avocado oil and took a tiny swig just to taste it. Sure enough, avocado oil seems to have a light (tasteless) creamy feel which seems to come through on the p-chips.

    I’m a giant fan of these chips. Even sent the CEO a linkedIn invite after a bag. (He did not accept my invite.)

  • Danny March 21, 2014  

    How does the post support your title of avocado oil being a scam? It should be titled “I’m an idiot who loves chips and doesn’t know how to title a blog posts.”

    There is a difference between a food being unhealthy and it being fattening. There is no such thing as a non-fattening potato chip but there is a healthIER chip now thanks to Good Health making this product with AVOCADO OIL as opposed to vegetable/canola/nut oils. WHY? Because those other oils contain a high amount of Linoleic Acid, and inflammatory chemical which contains small/dense LDL cholesterol which lead to hard arterial walls, heart disease, and heart attacks. Avocado oil is not a source of linoleic acid and has large/bouyant LDL cholesterol which floats in the blood and doesn’t attach to arterial walls (much like HDL in eggs, grassfed beef, and olive oil, it is a HEALTHY cholesterol) and will not give you a heart attack.

    Eat these chips every day without moderation or exercise and YOU WILL GET FAT but these chips will not result in hard arterial walls and death. I don’t work for Good Health and am disappointed in their use of safflower and canola oil in most of their other products. I WISH they used Avocado Oil in their sweet potato chips.

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