A Pip of a Chip

I don’t eat a lot of snack foods. Not that I don’t like them and the hollow calories that they provide (if my body craves hollow calories, I usually drink a beer), but it is a habit (one of the very few good habits that I have) that I developed as a child.

My parents didn’t keep snack foods (except for potato chips, which were only to be eaten with lunch) in the house. My Mom would always tell us that these foods would ruin our appetites for supper. Snacks were only eaten after supper. And most of the time we were too full to eat them before nine at night.

The snack foods that my Dad ate were pickled herring, sardines in mustard sauce and occasionally popcorn. Needless to say, as a child and a teen the popcorn was the only one of these snacks that appealed to me.

We also always had Ice Cream on hand, but Ice Cream was considered to be a dessert and not a snack; the only time we ate it was after supper, as a part of our dinner. My favorite was Spumoni which we would get from a nearby Italian Pizzeria (more about this in my next Blog).

As usual I have digressed from the main topic of this Blog; which is Potato Chips.

When I was a kid my parents would buy a Potato Chip Brand named Jays (not to be confused with Lays); these were Chicago’s most popular potato chip, at that time. Their slogan was “A Pip of a Chip”. They came in one and a quarter ounce bags (I believe that there were also family size bags available). My Mom said that this was the prefect portion to accompany a lunchtime sandwich. If we bought the larger bag we would tend to eat more than we should and therefore ruin our appetites. She also monitored the bag count daily to make sure that no one was cheating on their potato chip intake.

I have always enjoyed eating potato chips with a sandwich.

The other day I ate a sliced chicken breast sandwich, and of course, I wanted potato chips to accompany this sandwich. My daughter had purchased a box of (fifty count) one ounce bags (vending size) of Lays Potato Chips at Sam’s Club. When I buy chips, I usually buy the 12 and ½ ounce to 14 ounce bags (ounce for ounce it is less expensive – especially when they are on sale – but is it really less expensive?).

Here is what I found in the one ounce bag. There were 85% whole chips, 15% broken chips and no crumbs. In the big family size bags you are lucky if you get 60% whole chips, 25% broken chips, 12% bits and pieces (not worth eating) and another 3% crumbs (also not worth eating). You end up feeding 15% of your purchase to the birds and insects, or worse yet putting it into the trash.

I used to attribute this to the grocery store’s mishandling of the bags when stocking the shelves, but now I’m beginning to wonder. Does Frito-Lay put their scraps in the larger bags so that they can put them on sale more often? Also, why aren’t potato chips packaged in clear bags as Doritos are?

I want to know!

The Beach Bum