Pringles are crisps, not chips
Unless you’re un-American, you love Pringles: those uniformly yet oddly shaped potato chips that come in a long canister and taste like a salty heaven. Strangely, though, they’re technically not potato chips, they’re “potato crisps.” Why the slight change in designation?
First of all, you really didn’t think that only the Pringles company was able to find a potato slicer with such accuracy that all of its fried slices would stack neatly in a tall canister, did you? Unlike traditional chips which are simply sliced, fried, and seasoned, Pringles are a combination of potatoes, flour, fat, and… other stuff. The “dough” is extruded into the shape we all know and love, although it’s a little less lovely when words like “extruded” are used.
Because Pringles are made with just a 42% potato content, the FDA ruled in 2005 that Pringles couldn’t use the phrase “potato chips” unless it was accompanied by a long disclaimer, so the company switched to “crisps” as if that will somehow convey the correct ingredient ratio to the consumer. It’s likely you never noticed the change.
To further confuse the matter, in the UK, where they actually call real potato chips “crisps,” Pringles1 tried to avoid a specific food tax by defending that their snack is a little less “potato-like” than other potato chips/crisps thanks to the lackof real potato ingredients, hoping Pringles would fall into the category of “savoury food” which doesn’t require the additional tax. The tax is a little confusing, but it appears that it is much like our recent candy tax mentioned here back in August.2 In the end, the judges told Pringles that the tax would stand. So, if you want to “pop a top” of Pringles in the UK, it will cost you a little more than the company had hoped.
Now, when you bust open the traditional red can with your friends on Sunday while watching the Saints beat the Vikings, you will have a frighteningly detailed Pringles story to rehash for them. Yes, I said rehash. Happy weekend.
Read on:
DailyMail.co.uk – Pringles? They’re just crisps, say judges in £100m tax battle
- or more specifically, Procter & Gamble ↩
- http://www.dinnertopics.com/government/candy-tax-not-a-sweet-endeavor/ ↩
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