We Only Taste 20% of the Salt on Potato Chips, PepsiCo Responds with New ‘Designer Salt’
Lay’s Classic potato chips are hard to resist, but they have a lot more salt than you might think. In fact, we only taste about 20% of the chip’s salt before swallowing the other 80%.
Lay’s parent company PepsiCo is taking this information and applying it to the development of a healthier chip sprinkled with “designer salt”. They’ve been working to uncover the science of the seasoning — which versions dissolve effectively on the tongue and how much contributes to taste — and the result was a powdery salt shaped in a way that still delivers flavor but could reduce chips’ sodium levels by 25%.
In an effort to make its snacks a bit healthier, PepsiCo also nixed frying its potato chips in transfats and switched to sunflower oil. PepsiCo Chairman Indra Nooyi explains,
What we want to do with our “fun for you” products is to make them the healthiest “fun for you” products. We want our potato chips to be fried in the healthiest oils with the lowest salt.
It’ll probably be a few years until these “healthier” potato chips are rolled out, so hoard the super salty versions while they last.
