2361: Pringles & Its Linguistic Dilema Jun 5, 2021

While it's true that usually in the US flat, cooked, hard discs of potato are called '(potato) chips', and that in the UK these same things are called 'crisps', it is in a certain sense challenged. There is in the US a legal definition, and therefore limitation on what is a 'chip' and Pringles® do not meet these criteria and so in the US are actually mandatorily avoided as 'crisps'. This is because rather than drying, baking, or frying whole potatoes, Pringles use "dehydrated processed potato" along with corn, rice, wheat and other ingredients. This was ruled legally not a potato chip in 1975 and while the alternative 'crisp' is used in the US, this might have posed a problem in the UK. They had a separate legal decision there where it was decided that they could use the culturally dominant word 'crisp' for the particular snack.