People Are Just Realizing Pringles Is Not 100% Potato Chips — What They're Made From Is Even Weirder

It’s just a bushy black mustache on a grumpy old man’s face. This mustache is able to sell over 2.3 billion cans of Pringles each year, per Tastewise. As seen in its Super Bowl Commercial, The Call of the Mustaches, Pringles seems to have stripped all men of their proud mustaches and stamped it on their tennis-ball-tube-like packs of potato chips that come in a palette of bright, spicy colors. The mustache and the two black dot eyes never fail to entice these people from gobbling the entire tube. “Once You Pop, You Can’t Stop,” as the slogan says.

But lately, some of these intellect-bearing humans have started questioning whether these parabola-shaped crispy wafers are actually “chips.” The answer, as it turns out, is no, as the Reddit user, u/Urdicrates, says. “Pringles aren't actually potato chips; instead, they’re dehydrated potato flakes pressed into their signature parabolic shape. When other potato chip manufacturers complained, the FDA ruled that Pringles couldn't be marketed as chips. The company eventually settled on ‘potato crisp,’” the user wrote in the post caption.

Although the official website of Pringles doesn’t mention, in specific, whether they are "chips" or "crisps," they do write that the snack is made with “dried potatoes” along with other ingredients like degerminated yellow corn flour, corn starch, rice flour, wheat starch, and assorted vegetable oils. And considering that they are made of dried and dehydrated potatoes, they should be seen as flakes, not chips exactly.

“For 65 years, Webster's dictionary has defined a potato chip as a thin slice of raw potato, fried crisp and then salted. The F.D.A. held to that definition until 1969, when Procter & Gamble began to test‐market Pringles. Then, without notice to anyone, the F.D.A. gave Procter & Gamble permission to go ahead with the use of the words ‘potato chips’ on its product,” Lawrence Burch, executive vice president, admits the F.D.A. told The New York Times, according to an article from their 1975 archive.

Or, maybe, the chips-versus-crisps discrepancy could simply be a cultural difference, as one Reddit user pointed out. “Crisps are what all ‘chips’ are known as in the UK. Chips are more like chips of potatoes in the UK, rather than thin crisped slices of potato. French fries aren’t the same as chips,” said u/AutonInvasion. Another user, u/Gorau, shared, “Pringles were also involved in a court case in the UK as to whether it was a crisp or not. It was at one point ruled that, as it contained less than 50% potato and was formed into a shape, it was not a crisp and was more like a cake. […] This decision was later overturned, and Pringles are classified as crisps now.”

This paltry wordplay, however, doesn’t concern all those fans who believe from the bottom of their heart that Pringles is the only brand that doesn’t sell air under the name of chips. One person even had a dream that a can of Pringles was hired as a main character in Shrek 6. So, whatever the noun, these people’s love for Pringles is unflinching. “They could call them potato crackers if they want... they're still delicious,” exclaimed u/Lord-Velveeta. So, if you spot the grumpy old man’s face with this signature mustache, go ahead and toss it in your cart. And remember, “Hold on to your mustache” because these mustaches aren’t disappearing from the shelves anytime soon.