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National Potato Chip Day: Oh my, how should I celebrate when there are so many potato chips to choose from? Fried or baked? Thin or thick cut? Regular, wavy or ruffled? Salted or unsalted? From a bag or from a tube? So many different flavors from so many different chip makers; local and national! Served as is, or with a dip. Aaaagh! Decisions, decisions!
Potato chips are Americans' favorite snack to munch on, as we eat about 1.85 billion pounds of them each year. That's about six pounds of chips for each person. So as you crunch away on your favorite chips today, here are some interesting facts you may not have known:
- Potato chips are believed to be a top contributor to weight gain because they are high in fat and highly addictive.
- That bag of chips is actually not full of air. It's full of nitrogen gas, which prevents the chips from oxidizing.
- Lay's was the first successfully marketed national brand of potato chip.
- The British call them "crisps."
- The earliest known potato chip recipe is found in a cookbook titled The Cook's Oracle, which was published in 1817.
- It takes 10,000 pounds of potatoes to make 2,500 pounds of potato chips.
- The average chip is between .04 and .08 of an inch thick.
- Pennsylvania is the leading producer of potato chips in the world.
- Lay's Potato Chips was the first snack food advertised on television.
- Pringles are technically not chips since they are made from a dough formed from dried potatoes.