You didn’t say it two centuries ago. You did it.

You actually placed a wood chip upon your shoulder to challenge a rival. If he knocked it off, he was agreeing to fight you.

When you say it today, fisticuffs rarely follow. And what causes you to say it today is resentment, usually deeply ingrained and directed at something or somebody.

Whether it’s justified or not.

Many outstanding athletes, for instance, seem to have a chip on their shoulder long after excellence, not an opponent, should have knocked it off. Yet they do more than carry it.

They knowingly nurture it.

They do so because they know it keeps them motivated.

Even after football experts acknowledged he was the greatest quarterback of all time, for instance, Tom Brady did not let go of the fact he was a sixth-round draft choice, that 198 college players - including six quarterbacks - were selected ahead of him. In fact, he still talks about that perceived slight in retirement.

While your game-playing days may be over, too, realize that health-conscious guys like Brady never retire from another game. The one where the objective is, in some way, shape, or form, to improve your health and fitness.

So if a grievance, imaginary or not, gets your competitive juices flowing, why not place a big, fat chip on your shoulder? Just not one deep fried, sprinkled with salt, and preserved with questionable chemicals.

Like sodium bisulfite, which is also found in most toilet bowl cleaners.

Because those sorts of chips are one example - albeit far from the best one - for why an invisible chip should occupy the space between your arm and your neck.

So let the resentment flow, my friend. And direct it at those food companies that knowingly produce foods that make your taste buds turn against you.

Those companies that are OK with making you unhealthy when it makes them a healthy profit.

If you’re not feeling a weight upon your shoulder quite yet, let me remind you of the analysis done by six researchers, published in the British Journal of Medicine last October, and previously mentioned in a prior Fitness Master article. They found “the combination of refined carbohydrates and fats often found in UPFs [ultra-processed foods] seems to have a supra-additive effect on brain reward systems, above either macronutrient alone, which may increase the addictive potential of these foods.”

If that doesn’t get your goat, my guess is the prior mention of chips has you a little confused. After all, the most popular kind of chip, a potato chip, rarely contains the element that makes so many UPFs bad for you: added sugars.

But that temporary confusion, my friend, was created on purpose because the people at Lay’s aren’t lying when they say, “Betcha can’t eat just one.” Eating potato chips is downright addicting.

Yet the addictive quality to potato chips would actually increase if added sugars were used to create a 1-to-1 ratio of carbs to fat by calories.

That’s what those six researchers found in their aforementioned analysis of 281 studies from 36 countries - and also what more recent research led by the University of Bristol, in Bristol England and published in the November 2023 issue of Appetite discovered. The details of the latter study can also be found in a University of Bristol press release.

In short, 224 adults were shown between 24 and 32 images of familiar foods, foods like cashews, crispbread, grapes, avocados, muffins, sausage, and ice cream. The foods pictured varied in energy density, the degree to which they are processed, and carb-to-fat ratio.

The participants were then asked to imagine eating those foods and to rate each for likability (taste), desirability, saltiness, and sweetness. The last assessment helped validate the study by “finding a strong relationship between sweetness ratings and food sugar content.”

Surprisingly, the ratings of the UPFs for taste and desirability were not higher than the ratings of the other foods. What was apparent, however, is what many call the “combo effect,.”

That foods containing nearly the same number of calories of carbs and fat are better liked and more desired than foods that lack one or the other.

This could very well be why a seemingly bad idea like the keto diet creates weight loss for many people. Its near-elimination of carbs makes the fat consumed less appealing, so you eat less.

But don’t think the University of Bristol-led study exonerates UPFs - or the food producers who make them.

First of all, do you think it’s coincidence that the typical chocolate bar contains nearly equal amounts of carbs and fat by calories? Or that many of UPFs that don’t follow this ratio, like potato chips, have been stripped of their fiber?

After all, this research also suggests “humans are programmed to learn to like foods with more equal amounts of carbohydrate and fat, and lower amounts of fiber.”

And food companies do their darndest to do the programming, thereby insuring sales and profits - and often harming your health in the process.