Why popcorn and pretzels are the worst movie snacks... and the best

Tasteless. Unhealthy. The classic “movie” snacks baffled me since day 1. I would rather milk a cow with my bare lips than fill my gut with exploding corn nuggets and knotty dough.

The reason they're popular is simple. When you're watching a movie, you're not thinking. Your brain responds to the salt payload of each bite, and the answer is simple. More. Ever eat an unsalted, unflavored potato chip? Try it. Take a single chip to the sink, rinse, and let it dry. If you're more daring, take a whole bag, and see if you still want to finish 500 grams over a single episode of Parks and Recreation. Not so funny now, Amy Poehler.

Fats and sugar affect brain chemistry, says David Kessler, former head of the FDA and Dean of Yale School of Medicine. Food companies are just as guilty as the tobacco industry. Obesity continues to be the leading cause of preventable death worldwide (counting hypertension, or high blood pressure, whose other main causes are aging, low exercise and poor diet). Smoking is second. Interesting that first and second places for murder, globally, are the products we buy every week at the local supermarket.

Sugar is essential for your survival. It is naturally absorbed through the consumption of carbohydrates. For most of human history, pure sugar was unheard of. In evolutionary terms, humans like the taste of sugar because it encouraged our hunter-gatherer ancestors to eat foods like fruits, vegetables, honey and berries. (Bitter tastes, incidentally, were to scare them away from poisons, diseases, and indigestible flora.) Sugar traders were rare and wealthy until the 18^th century, when suddenly sugar became a food ingredient “necessity”. Colonization of tropical islands, and the slave trade, was driven in large measure by the sugar market, and it was only after sugar production became automated that European cultures “rediscovered” their Christian heritage (which started as the truth of universal social equality) and began to outlaw slavery.

Today, sugar is harvested primarily from sugarcane and sugar beets, plus maize from the United States, subsidized to produce high fructose corn syrup. Fructose and glucose, the resultant compounds of all three, are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion, and are fuel for the brain and other body functions. Fructose is almost twice as sweet as glucose (and by the way, some corn syrups are engineered to have almost exclusively fructose). Sugar is even added to apparently non-sweet food products, like potato chips, peanut butter and soup. As a result of sugar inflation, desensitization and marketing tactics, most people in developed countries consume ten times the sugar the body needs.

Likewise, sodium, highly concentrated in salt, is found in naturally high concentrations in nuts and meats, but is present in nearly all foods. Like sugar, salt was an expensive commodity for most human history and was at times used as trading currency. Essential for storing meat, salt transformed seasonal and geographical limits to food, thus playing a major part in the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer-settler (civilization). 

Biologically, salt (less than a teaspoon daily) is needed to regulate body fluids and pH, and by the nervous system to send electrical signals. When salt is broken down into its constituent elements, sodium and chloride, sodium regulates blood volume and pressure, while chloride is used to break down food into energy.

Food companies take this physiological predisposition toward salt, concentrate it in an almost pure form, and add it to their products so that people find them irresistible. 75% of the world population now consumes more than double the recommended intake, and many surpass the amount agreed by the United States, Canada and Britain to be decidedly unhealthy (6 grams/day).

While we all know that consuming too little salt is lethal, too much (1 gram per kilogram of body weight) is equally deadly short-term and arguably damaging long-term. There are associations between high salt consumption and increased likelihood of stroke, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and edema (fluid accumulation and swelling). Since healthy kidneys work to process excess sodium, the data across an entire population is inconsistent, but as a whole an excess salt diet has a markedly negative impact, particularly on margin demographics such as the infirmed, disabled, youth and elderly.

The Salt Institute, Salt Works and other such organizations claim that there is no negative connection between health and overconsumption of salt. Reminiscent, perhaps, of the outcries of the tobacco companies not too many years ago? In any case, the salt controversy continues to rage, and meanwhile, salt, like sugar, is used to sell. For decades food companies been researching how to keep us hooked to their product. 

Coincidentally, Kessler also ousted the tobbaco companies. He's a regular whistle-blower. He was even fired as Dean of UCSF Medical School for calling attention to his own school's questionable financial practices. Kessler's legitimacy is unquestioned. His investigations in tobacco led to a 368 billion-dollar settlement and immunized the companies to future lawsuits. Notice how cigarette prices went up eight-kagillion percent in the past ten years? Notice how cigarette packs have uglier and uglier warning labels on the boxes? That was him. 

Unfortunately, selling eggrolls is a lot harder to tax or prohibit than Camels. Alcoholism was declared an illness as early as 1956 and is currently recognized as both a psychological and a medical afflication. What about food dependency and obesity? 

Dietary fat is an essential part of a healthy diet, despite the attack during the 20^th century on the stuff, to the point where being called “fat” (once merely a scientific term) became one of the bigger social insults, and being fat one of the bigger social crimes. However, vitamins essential to our survival can only be digested and absorbed when fat is present. Fat buffers the body's delicate innards from physical trauma, regulates body temperature, protects us from diseases, and increases the health of every living cell. More well known, but less important in the abundance of the western world, fat allows energy to be stored for future use.

The great irony is that “fat” has been for decades the supposed culprit of obesity. The reality is that fat is more a symptom than a cause. Yes, fat tastes good, as studies in 2001 demonstrated, which is why the smooth creamyness of milk chocolate is so easy to recall.

In 1914 the call against fat went out. To support the rationing war effort, gaining wait was called “unpatriotic” by popular American and British magazines. Before that, we can trace the change of heart toward fat as early as the French revolution, when obesity was associated with the aristocracy and thus damnable. Before this time, some state officials and rulers would pad their bodies to look bigger and therefore more imposing, powerful, dangerous. Oh, how the times have changed. Obesity is seen, at least in North America, as a moral issue. If you are fat you are lazy and cannot control your impulses.

Fat, however, is not the great enemy of the 21^st century. Lobbyists in Washington continue to block the restriction of high-salt and high-sugar foods in universal policies that could transform the diet of the nation. Symbolic initiatives like the soft drink controversy in 2012 in New York are met with ridicule. And all the while these products continue to make headway in Europe, Africa and Asia. The only way that other producers can compete is to artificially enhance their foods and drinks, too. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Check out this webpage for a more complete list.

Speaking of joining them, if you've never tried mixing salted and sweetened popcorn, or eating salted chocolate, it's about the cheapest mouth orgasm out there.

Labeling laws have allowed public opinion to crack down on fat content. Packaging with words like “non-fat”, “low fat”, “less fat”, and “lean” are guaranteed to increase sales. “Unsweetened” and “low sodium”, on the other hand, don't yet sound as sexy. Consequently, the solution is to exchange one tasty substance for another. Take out the fat, label it "non-fat", add salt or sugar, and like magic, sales go up without making food any healthier or less addictive. Everyone wins... except the consumer.

Since fat is a highly stigmatized substance, most foods don't have much. Regardless, remember that fat equals 4 calories per gram, whereas protein (generally viewed as a positive food substance) has 2, so either way you look at it, it's portion size that's going to make a major difference, not whether your yoghurt is 5% fat or 10% fat. As long as the food products are designed to make you crave for more, unable to stop until it's all gone, then wanting to go back to the store to get more, fat content might drop, but portion size will not.