Doritos creator Arch West dead at 97: burial with corn chips planned
Tortilla chip’s will get you everywhere… Pamela Anderson out in London, England, with “Alan,” star of a Doritos TV commercial.
Arch West, creator of Doritos, will be buried with the flavored tortilla chips that made him famous.
West's daughter told the Dallas Morning News that the family planned to sprinkle his urn with Doritos before burying it in dirt.
"He’ll love it," she reportedly said.
The 97-year-old a former Frito-Lay executive died of natural causes on Sept. 20 at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas, the International Business Times reports.
West invented Doritos — supposedly pidgin Spanish for "little bits of gold," Wired Magazine once reported — after a family trip to Mexico.
He came upon a snack shack selling fried tortilla chips and the idea for Doritos was born.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Frito-Lay officials were not keen on the idea but consumer testing proved positive and they began manufacturing the chips.
Doritos Toasted Corn was the first variety to launch nationally, in 1967, a Frito-Lay spokesperson told the LA Times. Throughout the years Frito-Lay has introduced more than thee dozen varieties of the chips, from Cool Ranch to 3rd Degree Burn Scorchin’ Habanero.
The LA Times writes that:
By the 1970s, Doritos was one of the best-selling chips in the Frito-Lay arsenal, but the chips that will accompany West to his grave are quite different from those the company released more than 40 years ago.
Doritos were given a big overhaul in 1995, when Frito-Lay made them 20 percent larger and 15 percent thinner. Frito-Lay also got rid of the sharp angles on the chip, giving it rounded corners.
Wired Magazine published an article on the chemical composition of the Late Night All Nighter Cheeseburger version of Doritos in their regular feature, What’s Inside.
Notably, the article claims that Doritos are 29 percent fat by weight. A small bag contains 260 calories, 120 of them from fat, and 360 milligrams of sodium, the LA Times reports.
Still, the Dorito appears to have a begrudging admirer at The Washington Post:
The Dorito is what you bring to a barbecue when you forget to bring anything else. The Dorito is the intersection of taste and shame. The Dorito represents the proud audacity of slovenliness. Not only are they bad for you, but they are loud. Not only are they loud, but they are messy. Not only are they messy, but the messiness is egregious, offensive, stubborn. Snacking Without Borders.