“No one can eat just one”, so claims Lays and indeed, it is true. Have anyone of us stopped munching any crisp, tasty potato chips after just grabbing a bite of a single chip? Something makes us all go on chomping them until we feel a kind of fulfillment from consuming them. Despite their distinction of being an unhealthy food preparation, the sales of potato chips never seem to take a dip. People love to enjoy them and go about doing so despite the health-pundits attacks on the all-time favorite crunchy potato chips. In a market of savory snacks pegged at $46.1 billion in 2005, potato chips generated almost 35% of this revenue i.e. about $ 16.4 billion. 
How did this craze called potato chips begin? The creation of these crunchy irresistible chows goes back to mid-1800s New York. Two stories have been proposed for the creation of the potato chips. One story says that George Speck Crum, the cook at Carey B. Moon’s Lake House was infuriated that one of the customers had labeled his potatoes tasteless and soggy and so he fried the potatoes after slicing them, seasoned them with salt and served them to customers. Another account states that the Catherine Speck Adkins Wicks, the chef’s sister accidentally dropped a slice of potato while frying doughnuts and that is how the crisp potato chip came into being. Since then, the popularity of the potato chips has grown overwhelmingly.
In the initial days of the potato chips, the method of preparation was nothing different from the handmade way we would have followed at home. However, the introduction of mechanical peelers and the continuous fryer equipped with conveyors and paddles that stirred slices of potatoes through a stream of searing oil in 1920s, saw a kind of revolution in the conventional way in which potato chips were prepared. So intriguing were the chips that a snack salesman from Nashville, Herman Lay in 1930 came up with the brilliant idea of going commercial with them. He founded what is one of the popular and biggest sellers of potato chips, the Frito-Lay. Today, people in as many as 40 countries relish Lay’s.
The way in which potato chips are prepared has a lot of bearing on their crunchy character. The fat used to fry them, the time for which they are fried, the method of slicing potatoes and the thickness of slices all influence the crispiness of the potato chip. The method of determining the crispiness is as special as the chips. The sound of a bite into the chip is taken close to a microphone. Following the bite, the cells in the potato slices are broken which results in production of bouts of high-frequency sonic energy which are processed and forwarded to a headphone. The sounds are then recorded as unaltered, amplified or muted to arrive at the crunchy character of the chip. The more cells are broken the greater is this energy production, the more amplified is the sound and crisper is the chip. Sounds amazing doesn’t it?
The reasons for widespread popularity of chips apart from their crispiness is the seasonings used that vary with every region around the globe to suit the palates of people from different countries. Each region of the world has its own special seasonings.
– The Americans enjoy potato chips with flavors of sour cream and onion, nacho, cheddar cheese and barbeque.
– The nationals of Germany and Italy like their potato chips with the paprika flavor.
– The Japanese have theirs flavored with takoyaki, wasabi, kimchi, soy sauce & butter, takoyaki, garlic, nori & salt, consomme among the many seasonings.
– The Indians love their potato chips with a seasoning of chaat masala, salt, red chilly powder or mint.
– Popular seasonings in the United Kingdom include cheese & onion, Branston Pickle, salt & vinegar, cheese & onion, worcester sauce, smoky bacon, lamb & mint, ham & mustard, tomato ketchup to name a few.
It is amazing to know how a common crispy snack has so much more to it that yet remains to be known by its countless fans.
