Pringles

**Pringles** is an American brand of potato and wheat-based stackable snack chips. It is owned by Kellogg's.

Originally developed by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1967, and marketed as "Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips", the brand was sold to Kellogg's in 2012. As of 2011 Pringles are sold in more than 140 countries. In 2012, Pringles were the fourth most popular snack brand after Lay's, Doritos and Cheetos (all manufactured by Frito-Lay), with 2.2% market share globally.

## History

In 1956, Procter & Gamble assigned a task to chemist Fredric J. Baur (1918-2008): to develop a new kind of potato chips to address consumer complaints about broken, greasy, and stale chips, as well as air in the bags. Baur spent 2 years developing saddle-shaped chips from fried dough, and selected the tubular can as the chips' container. However, he could not figure out how to make the chips taste good, and was pulled off the task to work on another brand. In the mid-1960s another P&G researcher, Alexander Liepa of Montgomery, Ohio, restarted Baur's work and succeeded in improving the taste. Although Baur was the true inventor of the Pringles chip, Liepa's name is on the patent. Gene Wolfe, a mechanical engineer and author known for science fiction and fantasy novels, helped develop the machine that cooks them.

The consistent saddle shape is mathematically known as a hyperbolic paraboloid. Their designers reportedly used supercomputers to ensure that the chips' aerodynamics would keep them in place during packaging and that they would not break when being stacked on top of each other.

P&G began selling Pringles in limited areas in 1967; by 1975, they were available across most of the US, and by 1991 were distributed internationally.

There are several theories behind the origin of the product's name. One theory refers to Mark Pringle, who filed a US Patent 2,286,644 titled "Method and Apparatus for Processing Potatoes" on March 5, 1937. Pringle's work was cited by P&G in filing their own patent for improving the taste of dehydrated processed potatoes. Another theory suggests that two Procter advertising employees lived on Pringle Drive in Finneytown (north of Cincinnati, Ohio), and the name paired well with "potato chips". Another theory says that P&G chose the Pringles name from a Cincinnati telephone book.

The product was originally known as Pringles Newfangled Potato Chips, but other snack manufacturers objected, saying Pringles failed to meet the definition of a potato "chip" since they were made from a potato-based dough rather than being sliced from potatoes like "real" potato chips. The US Food and Drug Administration weighed in on the matter, and in 1975 they ruled Pringles could only use the word "chip" in their product name within the phrase: "potato chips made from dried potatoes". Faced with such a lengthy and unpalatable appellation, Pringles eventually renamed their product potato "crisps", instead of chips.

In July 2008, in the London High Court, P&G lawyers successfully argued that Pringles were not crisps even though labelled "Potato Crisps" on the container (in Britain what are known as "chips" in the US are known as "crisps") as the potato content was only 42% and their shape, P&G stated, "is not found in nature". This ruling, against a United Kingdom value added tax (VAT) and Duties Tribunal decision to the contrary, exempted Pringles from the then 17.5% VAT for potato crisps and potato-derived snacks. In May 2009, the Court of Appeal reversed the earlier decision. A spokesman for P&G stated it had been paying the VAT proactively and owed no back taxes.

In April 2011, P&G agreed to the US$2.35 billion sale of the brand to Diamond Foods of California, a deal which would have more than tripled the size of Diamond's snack business. However, the deal fell through in February 2012 after a year-long delay due to issues over Diamond's accounts. On May 31, 2012, The Kellogg Company officially acquired Pringles for $2.695 billion as part of a plan to grow its international snacks business. The acquisition of Pringles makes Kellogg the second-largest snack company in the world.

As of 2015, there are 5 Pringles factories worldwide: in Jackson, Tennessee; Mechelen, Belgium; Johor, Malaysia; Kutno, Poland; and Fujian, China.

## Ingredients

Pringles have about 42% potato content, the remainder being wheat starch and flours (potato, corn, and rice) combined with vegetable oils, an emulsifier, salt, and seasoning. Other ingredients can include sweeteners such as maltodextrin and dextrose, monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, sodium caseinate, modified food starch, monoglyceride and diglyceride, autolyzed yeast extract, natural and artificial flavorings, malted barley flour, wheat bran, dried black beans, sour cream, cheddar cheese, etc.; Pringles varieties vary in their ingredients.

Pringles also produces several "tortilla" and "multi-grain" varieties which have some of their base starch ingredients replaced with corn flour, rice, wheat bran, black beans, and barley flour. At one point in the early 1990s, "Corn Pringles" were available; the canister was black and had cartoon images of corn. The chips were made of corn and resembled a corn chip in flavor and texture. Rice Pringles were also available in the UK although it had been discontinued.

## Nutrition

One serving of about 16 Pringles (Original flavor) contains 150 calories, 2.5 g of saturated fat, 150 mg of sodium, 110 mg of potassium, and 1 g of protein.