“Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing”

This post is about one thing — the fact that that headline struck me as funny. I got if from the above video, done by an Air Force pilot (a guy you’d think would be used to noise) who is really fed up with noisy chip bags:

Frito-Lay makes a lot of noise marketing its Sun Chips snacks as “green.” They are cooked with steam from solar energy, the message goes.
But its latest effort—making the bags out of biodegradable plant material instead of plastic—is creating a different kind of racket. Chip eaters are griping about the loud crackling sounds the new bag makes. Some have compared it to a “revving motorcycle” and “glass breaking.”
It is louder than “the cockpit of my jet,” said J. Scot Heathman, an Air Force pilot, in a video probing the issue that he posted on his blog under the headline “Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing.” Mr. Heathman tested the loudness using a RadioShack sound meter. He squeezed the bag and recorded a 95 decibel level. A bag of Tostitos Scoops chips (another Frito-Lay brand, in bags made from plastic) measured 77….

I haven’t checked them out, but those must be some noisy chip bags. And as a guy who is hypersensitive to that kind of noise — it can drive me up the wall — I don’t think I ever DO want to check them out. Part of what amuses me about this story is the notion that there are people out there — such as the guy who made that video — who get more worked up about such noise than I do.

Here’s what I would love — chips that are guaranteed not to crunch, either when you eat them or when you handle the packaging. That’s something I’d be willing to pay for, and distribute for free to anyone around me who just has to have a snack.

5 thoughts on ““Potato Chip Technology That Destroys Your Hearing””

  1. MP Baldauf

    I have purchased a bag or two to use as examples in my “green consumer” presentation, and they are VERY noisy! Drives the folks in the office crazy! But if you’re the one holding the bag, you can’t help but rustle it to make the noise!

  2. Kathryn Fenner

    I remember when chips came in wax paper bags, or was it wrapped up in oilcloth?

    Get offa my lawn!

  3. Anne

    They are ridiculously noisy, so much so I would recommend scissors. But you still have to eat them, because they are delicious with Palmetto Cheese!

  4. Maude Lebowski

    I could couch this in little-old-lady terms (…wobbly voice…”back in my day we had more important things to be concerned with…”) But since I’m not quite there I will just say that if this is the kind of thing Americans bitch about then we really are just a bunch of wimpy p*ssies.

  5. Herbie

    Oh FFS. Those compostable bags are just as loud as the rest of them. Just a different kind of loud. And good marketing gimick but still good for the environmnet, for those that compost the bags and not trash them.

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