Super Chips

Ever crack open a fresh bag of Doritos and find that some of the chips have way more seasoning on them than the others? Like, a lot more. Where do these super chips come from? Are they a mistake? Have they been put there intentionally?

I have two theories. The first is what I call the In Bag Theory (IBT). All the chips start out the same, but while in the bag the seasoning contents shifts to one or more chips at the bottom. I’m somewhat skeptical of this explanation but I feel it deserves some thought. All chips are created equal, but gravity conquers them as it does us all. Might there be a Pareto principle at play here where a chip with slightly more seasoning collects more seasoning over time which in turn leads to yet more unequal seasoning distribution? Possible, but unlikely. While seasoning is undoubtedly falling off chips I believe it is collecting in the bottom of the bag, not on other chips. The relative humidity is very low and the mechanism of accumulation of shedded seasoning escapes me. Furthermore, the distribution of seasoning doesn’t seem to be correlated to the position of the chips in the bag. Most chips are very uniform in seasoning while the occasional few, call it 5%, are saturated. That’s not the sort of distribution I would expect from a gravity fed system.

That leads me to the second theory, which I call Out of Bag (OOB). Something happens during the manufacturing process to create these super chips. The next logical question is whether these super chips are created intentionally or if they are an unintentional consequence of the Dorito production process. My gut tells me that these are unintentional and that rather than throwing out above spec chips, Big Chip slips them in to help weigh down the bags. I can’t prove this, but it is my working hypothesis right now.

However they come into existence, I love them.