Review: Is value still relevant in a bag of chips?

Even in these meager economic times, The United States is still in a state of excess. Unemployment rates are skyrocketing and obesity is still as popular as ever. As companies crumble and dictators tumble (down the treacherous path of tyranny and unequal rights for all), one thing is for certain: a cheap bag of potato chips. But how low can one go for that delicious bag of Ruffles™ Cheddar & Sour Cream chips?

The answer lies at a local convenience store or at a nearby Jewel-Osco where one can get the mother of all deals: a 35 cent bag of chips (or 4 for $1. However, unless you a fresh-faced child born alongside the Nintendo 64 in 1996, you will definitely remember the price used to be 25 cents a bag.

However, adjusting for inflation, one can find that price of a bag of chips raising by 40% within thirteen years is not so bad, especially alongside cars priced in the $30,000 range (as opposed to the price of a 1996 Toyota Corolla, which was priced at $11,000 in 1997).

At the headquarters of the Frito Lay™ brand in Plano Texas, chips are processed into different-sized bags, ranging from the large 9.5 oz bag to the (now) $1.29 bag of chips, which states the serving size per person is 11 chips, a lie in itself, because we know obese Americans can consume much more than 33 chips in one sitting.

Like a new digital cable package, it’s true that the more one buys, the more one can get for their monies worth. A 9.5 oz bag of Ruffles™ chips contains 110 chips, according to the nutritional facts, and is regularly priced at $3.99. A small bag of chips is still a quarter at most locations. So, why does the small bag of potato chips, which, at times, contain as many as 18 chips per bag, have more value than the party size bags (which never fill the bag)? It takes six to eight small bags of fun-size chips (with an average serving of 14-16 chips per bag) to equal the number of chips in a large bag, yet the price will only be 2 dollars (at roughly 4 bags for a dollar), plus tax. The goliath bag of chips, which is almost never under $3 is not a deal.

I have come to understand the American public’s appreciation of a good, old fashioned blind taste test to prove their doubts. Fifteen random Columbia students were chosen to try two chips, one from the $1.29 bag, and one from the value size bags. The response was overwhelming: a small bag of chips was voted “cheesier, better tasting, and even described by one woman as having a “rich” taste. The results were quite shocking: 13 voted on the value bag as “more delicious,” and the rest, in the spirit of American politics, those two votes were destroyed and/or misplaced in Florida and Ohio.

There is this nagging suspicion in the back of my head that food companies know more about us and our demographics. Therefore, they know we are susceptible to a valued bag of chips, and are prone to buy in bulk later. Like test driving a car, one should always take a taste by driving a few miles, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll spend more of our money and buy the whole damn thing. Margarine might just be fat, but it tastes better than butter. According to Roland Barthes in Mythologies, Margarine goes further than butter and costs less. A value bag of chips will curb my appetite until dinner and it allows me to live cheaply, just like the margarine I spread on my morning toast.

I’ll stick to the chips that cost a quarter. They don’t last long, but they pack quality over quantity in every chip, a rare trait to find as prices begin to bottom out in this recession. What else are you going to spend that quarter on: a gumball?