Hey, here’s something I bet you’ve never
really thought much about… the popularity of chips over pretzels. Everybody loves chips, I mean really,
what’s not to love, but pretzels, well they’re kind of the outcast of the snack
food community.
Chips are easy to make. You take a potato, slice it up, drop
the pieces into hot oil, and voila… chips! Pretzels on the other hand take much more work. You have to figure out how to make
pretzel dough, kneed it, take small amounts of the dough and roll them into
long segments, then fold ‘em all up so that they take the classic pretzel shape,
then bake them. Seriously, who has
time to do that? It’s no wonder
there are so few people out there making pretzels.
Chips come in a variety of flavours. Nowadays, you can pretty well get chips
in any flavor you can imagine.
Sour Cream & Onion, Ketchup, Dill Pickle, Chicken Wings, Mesquite, Salt & Vinegar, and the list goes on and on. Granted, some of the available flavours do sound
absolutely disgusting, but obviously people are buying them or else they
wouldn’t make them. There are so
many options of potato chip flavours that depending on your mood that day, you can find
a chip that will satisfy your snack food needs. Pretzels on the other hand, well, they taste like
pretzels. No fancy flavours
there. I hope you like pretzel
flavour, because that’s all you’re going to get!
Pretzel manufacturers had such high hopes of success,
and kudos to them for trying, but one day they must have walked into their big pretzel
warehouse and realized they made way too many pretzels than the market
demanded. This forced them to ask
themselves some difficult questions, the most important of which was “What are
we going to do with all these pretzels?!”
It was during one of those executive pretzel meetings where the Vice
President of Pretzels accidentally dropped a pretzel into his yogurt (even he
preferred yogurt as a snack food over pretzels). Upset, he ate the pretzel anyway, and that’s when a little
light went off, and his eyes opened real wide! “This pretzel tastes less like pretzel if we mask its
flavour with yogurt!” So they
started covering their left over pretzels in yogurt, put them into smaller
bags, and marketed them as a healthier alternative to chips. They also tried covering them in
chocolate, although the health benefits start to become a little foggy with
that idea. I give them an “A” for
effort, but regardless of whether I've got “the facts” straight of the
inner workings of the pretzel industry, when it comes right down to it, it’s
still a pretzel. They’re not
fooling anyone.
Chips have a nice gentle crunch, and have
managed to find a perfectly balanced ratio between crunch intensity, and the
strength of their consumers teeth and jaw. It doesn’t take much effort to eat chips, and let’s be
honest, if you’re sitting at home eating chips, you’re down for the count, and likely not in any mood
to be expending any more effort or energy than absolutely necessary. Pretzels are just far too crunchy. If you bite a pretzel the wrong way,
there’s potential it could puncture your cheek. Now who wants to deal with that?
If you’re having a party, and you put out one bowl of chips and one bowl of pretzels, it’s guaranteed that you’ll be re-filling the chip
bowl several times throughout the evening. Most of the pretzels on the other hand will likely find
their way back into the bag at the end of the night, leaving the host to wonder
why they even bought them in the first place. Some
people try to mix the pretzels in with other things, hoping the combination of
alcohol and the munchies will confuse people into eating at least a couple, and
sometimes that works. In any good
snack mix though, the pretzels will always be the last to go, and if you find yourself faced with a bowl of remnant snack mix pretzels, just think
about how many hands have reached into that bowl, and pushed the pretzels
around in order to get to the cheesies and other little goodies first. Unless
you really want to catch a cold, you may want to pass.
So there you have it. If you haven't ever really thought about this, now you have, and I think we can all agree the verdict is out. Chips are awesome, pretzels are
not. Case closed.