As I sat eating some potato chips off my sandwich plate this evening, I observed a curious phenomenon. And while I tell this story from only my own experience, I have collaborated with other quirky friends who concur that I am not alone in my habit. So here goes.

I noticed that, when given a portion of potato chips, all visible and available for consumption, I always choose the better-looking chip to eat first, thinking that I wouldn’t dare eat those nasty-looking ones. By “better” I mean the chips that aren’t transparent with oil. In a self-righteous attempt to convert the truly unhealthy nutritional value of potato chips into an edifying, “it’s full of potato,” attitude, I have myself think that the opaque chips aren’t going to lead to coronary artery disease nearly as quickly as the clear ones. And that might be true; the oily chips probably do contain much more unhealthy fats, and I might be marginally justified in my reasoning. So there I sit, eating only the “good” chips, one at a time.

But the funny part is, by the end of the meal, they’re all gone. By comparing each chip with the others, I effectively make a scale of potato chip healthiness in my mind. With each bite, I choose the most highly ranked chip, because it looks much better than the others. The trouble with this methodical approach, is that with every chip, the scale shifts downward, and the chip that looked so unhealthy beforehand now appears to be the most potato-laden of them all.

Now I don’t mean to sound obsessive on this matter, and I don’t usually belabor my odd thought processes on eating (and certainly not in writing), but I felt compelled to share this phenomenon with you, thinking that it might strike a chord. Alas, “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…”1

References: (1)