Potato Chips Or Something Else: What's The Deal With Pringles?

They come in tall cardboard cylinders, stacked one atop the other in a way that's supposed to prevent breakage. Their mascot is a large white oval with two black eyes and the kind of enormous curly mustache favored by circus strongmen and Central European aristocrats. You can put two chips in your mouth and pretend you have a duck bill. They're Pringles, and they're a beloved snack time staple all across America. But are they really potato chips? The answer, as it turns out, is no — but there's a reason why that makes it much less sinister than it might seem at first glance.

You'll notice that the word "chip" doesn't appear on any can of Pringles you'll find for the simple reason that they don't qualify as chips, which are just fried, thinly-sliced potatoes. Pringles, on the other hand, are formed from dehydrated flakes of potato, which are mixed with cornstarch and shaped into a crisp (the company's preferred nomenclature). It might sound involved, if not slightly dystopian, but the truth behind it is benign. If you open up a bag of regular potato chips, you'll find a whole bunch of irregular sizes: some the size of a sand dollar, others folded over themselves several times. Pringles could never be stacked in their neat little cans if they had that level of variance, so they shape them instead.

The FDA may have lax rules on what cheese counts as parmesan and which beef counts as wagyu, but they draw the line when it comes to chips. In 1977, they ruled that Pringles could only call their product "potato chips" if they specifically noted on the packaging that they were made from dehydrated potatoes. Pringles, for whatever reason, decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze and elected just to call them "potato crisps" instead.

This ended up causing a bit of confusion in the United Kingdom, where our "chips" are called "crisps." (Their chips, of course, are our french fries.) The UK often adds a tax on snacks, sodas, and other indulgences, and crisps are no exception. In an attempt to get around it, Pringles' parent company at the time, Proctor & Gamble, tried to convince an English court that Pringles weren't actually crisps at all. As they were less than 50% potato, they argued, they would be closer to some kind of bread product and, as such, exempt from the tax. And believe it or not, it worked — at least at first, until it was appealed to a higher court and promptly overturned. Whatever you (or Procter & Gamble's lawyers) want to call them, though, Pringles are delicious and a welcome part of our lives — although some would argue the Good Crisp Company has it beat.