SAN ANTONIO – If you enjoy eating chips but hate too much air in the bag, you might be in luck. PepsiCo announced last week that they would be increasing the net weight of some of their chip packages.
This comes after being accused of “shrinkflation” last year. According to Investopedia, this refers to the practice of reducing a product’s size without cutting back the price, usually involving food or drinks.
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Pepsi CEO Ramon Laguarta stated in the company’s earnings call on Oct. 8 that they would be adding 20% chips to their Ruffles and Tostitos products and bonus packs.
“It’s the football season. There’s a lot of gatherings and those brands belong very well in those gatherings,” he said.
That’s not the only change. The company also plans to add a few more Doritos bags to its multipacks.
In the call, Pepsi actually cut its forecast for the year from 4% to an unnamed, low single digit. It also reported a drop in revenue for the third quarter, blaming part of this on certain recalls at Quaker Foods North America and rising world tensions.
North Americans had been spending noticeably less money on these snacks and opting for cheaper brands, according to Laguarta.
You may wonder, however, why there is so much air in a chip bag. There is actually a reason for this.
According to the Food Republic, nitrogen gas is stored in the chip bag -- not just your generic “air” -- to keep the snack from going stale and a cushion to stop them from breaking too easily.
Without nitrogen, any chips transported from the factory to retail outlets would likely be more crumbs than a (questionably) nutritious snack by the time you ate it.
However, companies are not allowed to put as much “air” as they want in the bags. The technical term is “slack fill,” and it has been around since the early 1900s.
According to a Food and Drug Administration law passed in 1994, slack fill is legal as long as the air is necessary and the actual weight of the potato chips, not the bag’s volume, is what’s disclosed.
This has been the subject of several lawsuits, but only a few plaintiffs have built a solid enough case to win money for nonfunctional slack fill.
