When is a potato snack not a potato snack. What is it to be a potato, or to hold the quality of potatoness? The World's Marco Werman and Alex Gallafent do junk food philosophy.
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MARCO WERMAN: Okay, just before we break, The World's Alex Gallafent is here with something else in the news today.
ALEX GALLAFENT: Right, Marco. It concerns a snack food that's popular in Britain called Pringles. I believe you have them here, too, in the States.
WERMAN: Absolutely. They're everywhere and they're also in the jungles of Belize and in the urban areas of Iceland.
GALLAFENT: Okay, well, the thing you need to know first in this story is that in the U.K. not all snack foods are taxed equally.
WERMAN: Wow, really?
GALLAFENT: Uh-huh, most snacks aren't subject to the British sales tax but potato snacks are.
WERMAN: Pringles qualifies as a potato snack?
GALLAFENT: You'd certainly think so. I mean, they look a bit like a potato chip. They're savory like potato chips. They crunch like potato chips, and they're delicious like potato chips, and the potatoes make up 42% of Pringles.
WERMAN: I don't think this is the end of the matter, is it?
GALLAFENT: It is not. The American makers of Pringles, Proctor and Gamble, don't want to pay that sales tax. So in court they've been arguing that because the snack also contains 33% fat and has almost no natural potato taste, it does not have the quality of potatoness required to be considered a potato snack.
WERMAN: They're insulting the concept of potatoness?
GALLAFENT: Potatoness. Indeed, one judge in the case said the issue begged, "An Aristotelian question: Does the product have an essence of potato?" Proctor and Gamble argued, "No," pointing to Pringles, "mouth melt flavor, uniform color and a regular shape not found in nature." And since Pringles are manufactured from a dough, they argue that the chips are, in fact, more like a cake or a biscuit.
WERMAN: Mmm, unnatural chip cake. All right, Alex, who won this case, Proctor and Gamble or the British Tax Authorities?
GALLAFENT: The tax authorities and as the judges gave their verdict, they pulled another classic Aristotilean maneuver by involving an imaginary child at a birthday party, arguing that such a child would be better able to decide on Pringles potatoness than any food scientist. And in a damning conclusion the judges rejected Proctor and Gamble's claim that Pringles lacked the "essential characteristics of the paradigm potato crisp, crisp being the British word for "chip" but I don't think it would be wise for us to get into that right now.
WERMAN: No, and don't try this at home with your child. The World's Alex Gallafent. Thank you very much.
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