Why Potato Chip Bags Are Always Empty From Top

As frustrating as it can be to open a pack of Lay’s chip bag to discover empty air where your evening snack ought to be, that empty space in the chip bag is there on purpose. “Slack fill” is a purposeful decision by snack creators who need to shield their sensitive items from the harm of unpleasant dealing with the delivery procedure. At the point when items are stacked on each other, packed into tight spaces, or basically bumped around in the back of a conveyance truck, slack fill fills in as an air pad that keeps potato chips from turning into potato scraps.

That is not just any common air puffing up potato chip bags, either: It’s nitrogen. Oxygen can make the potatoes stale and the oil to go rotten, and the moistness found in encompassing air makes the chips go spongy. Rather, chip bags are loaded with nitrogen gas to enable the snacks to remain crisp, which an educated board of testers affirmed in a 1994 food science research. Nitrogen flushing isn’t unsafe in any case, since around 78 percent of the air we inhale is made out of nitrogen as of now. In any case, that doesn’t excuse the sheer extent of space that gas involves in a chip bag that should be loaded with sustenance.

Despite the fact that the government Fair Packaging and Labeling Act go in 1966 expected manufacturers to unmistakably show the net weight of their item’s substance to keep clients from being tricked by large appearing packages on the racks (as good as new potato chips, now with 50 percent more air!), the controls are once in awhile authorized. People are terrible at precisely seeing sizes, and even the most recognizing customers will consequently expect that bigger bundling implies more item, in the event that they don’t look too carefully at the name. So while some additional space in a chip bag can help keep potato chips new and in place, any more than normal would be appropriate may be the organization trying to pull a quick one over us.